French, Jordanian surgeons collaborate to save Syrian lives Istishari Hospital Framed between blue sheets, Sami’s rib cage lay open, revealing his heart, beating thanks to a complex arrangement of tubes and pumps while Jordanian and French surgeons competently fixed his congenital heart condition. The four-year-old boy from Daraa, Syria, was the youngest patient of the French medical team that travelled to Jordan to perform heart surgeries on Syrian and Jordanian children last week. Dubbed “La chaine de l’espoir”, the initiative was launched over 20 years ago by French Professor Alain Deloche, and relies on volunteering surgeons to treat children and build capacity among local medical staff throughout the world. “Heart surgery represents half of the surgeries provided to children together with labial, orthopaedic and neurological surgery among others, thanks to the various specialties of our pool of volunteers,” Middle East programmes manager Gonzague Desforges told The Jordan Times on Thursday. A Syrian doctor working in Paris, Ismail Moutawee, was approached by the Unified Syrian Medical Bureau, a voluntary association of Syrian doctors in Jordan looking for support to treat Syrian children. After coordinating with “La chaine de l’espoir”, a first assessment mission was carried out and nine Syrian children were taken to France for surgery at the end of 2012. “We quickly realised it would be more efficient and useful to treat the children where they were… it also helped mitigate the psychological trauma of having to travel to be treated,” Desforges said. In the past week, the team has treated a dozen Syrian children from the Zaatari Refugee Camp and urban settings along with underprivileged Jordanians. “I could never have afforded such a surgery; I am on my own with four children,” Marwa from Zarqa said as she sat by her son’s bed, only hours away from the surgery that would treat the six-year old boy’s valvular heart disease. Although the organisation had carried out several missions to provide orthopaedic surgery to injured children in Jordan, this was the first time the team addressed heart conditions in the Kingdom. “We realised that there was a need for heart surgeries and it was the core of the organisation to set-up a mission to treat these children,” Desforges noted, adding that “La chaine de l’espoir” was very grateful to the Istishari Hospital for its support in carrying out this mission. For Jordanian heart surgeon Hamdi Abu Ali, who worked together with “La chaine de l’espoir” throughout the week, Jordan needs more similar initiatives. “I love volunteer work, and here [at the hospital] we promote this and were happy to support this project, but we would love to set up such campaigns with the local community here in Jordan,” the surgeon said after he successfully completed the surgery on Sami. Pacing around the waiting lounge, Sami’s father said he wished the memories of the war could somehow be treated as well. “My son does not sleep properly; he gets panic attacks; he still wakes up crying in the middle of the night,” Ayman said while waiting for his son to wake up from the anaesthesia and return to what has been the family of ten’s home for the past two years, the Zaatari camp. The names of beneficiaries have been changed upon their request. Source: Jordan Time by Gaelle Sundelin
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 16:10:31 +0000
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