Gift of Life International 2009 Accomplishments

Our global efforts are now focusing on the development of sustainable pediatric cardiac surgical programs in developing countries. Although we continue to bring children in need of open-heart surgery to hospitals in the United States, we believe that it is essential to provide healthcare professionals in other countries with the training necessary to eventually perform the surgeries on their own children in their own country.

Following Through On Promises

Gift of Life International (GOLI) provides support to over 55 individual Gift of Life (GOL) programs on 5 continents in their efforts to bring hope to children in need of cardiac intervention. Accordingly, over the past year we have promoted initiatives in El Salvador, Trinidad, Honduras, Haiti and Uganda that ultimately will lead to these countries developing the capacity to on their own treat children with heart ailments.

Uganda

The ‘Our Hearts Are In Uganda’ program has now led to the saving of 35 Ugandan children’s lives. Additionally, we convened a conference in Kampala, Uganda in the middle of October. Present were 45 attendees from 4 continents. In part participants of this conference were pediatric cardiologists and surgeons from around the world. This conference has now laid the groundwork for 4 medical missions per year for 5 years. These missions will not only operate on 10 children at a time but will also facilitate the training of Ugandan doctors and nurses. Surgeons that operated on children during the ‘Our Hearts Are In Uganda’ program will be leading these missions. By 2014 we expect that the Ugandan Heart Institute will operate on 250 congenital heart patients a year on its own. An outgrowth of the ‘Our Hearts Are In Uganda’ program is that Rotary International issued a grant to operate on 20 children from Uganda who suffer from congenital heart defects. Rotarians in Korea and India became aware of our efforts and submitted a grant request that will result in these 20 children receiving their life-saving surgeries in India this winter.

Haiti

We have invested a considerable amount of time developing an approach to this country which is in such great need. With the help of GOLI last October the GOL program in Rotary District 7260 (Suffolk County, New York) conducted a screening mission to Haiti. 49 children were identified as in need of some type of cardiac intervention. To date we have been able to find treatment for 8 of these children and efforts are underway to find care for the remaining 41. We have been accessing two hospitals in the Dominican Republic in which GOLI helped to develop sustainable pediatric surgical programs. Lastly, we have been evaluating hospitals in Haiti to determine whether it would be possible for them to support their own pediatric cardiac surgery program.

Trinidad

Trinidad holds great potential for possessing a regional facility that would treat children in need of open-heart surgery in the Caribbean. They have two newly-built hospitals and we have a very active and motivated Rotary District in this country that gives us reason to focus on developing in country capabilities for open-heart surgery there. Currently, GOLI is working to coordinate the first GOL- sponsored medical mission to this country. Prior to this mission we will identify the equipment that is needed to perform the surgeries and through our network of Rotary-based programs we will work to acquire it.

Honduras

GOLI arranged for the GOL program in Rotary District 7260 to sponsor medical missions to Honduras and over the past year they have successfully treated 71 children. We hope to continue missions to this country and ultimately provide training to the healthcare professionals in Honduras so that they may care for their own children in the future. Our efforts in Honduras are coordinated through the International Children’s Hospital based in Memphis, Tennessee. The next mission to Honduras is scheduled for January 2010 and it will be sponsored by GOL programs in Rotary Districts 7470, 7260, 6630, 7500 and 7980. It is our plan to provide life-saving surgeries to between 20 and 25 Honduran children.

Growing The Network

We have traveled throughout the world and the United States to develop new programs. Each new program we develop means that more children’s lives will be saved. Over the past year we have added nine new GOL programs:

New Orleans
East Florida
Kenya
Trinidad and Tobago
Korea
Tanzania
Bangladesh
Bolivia
Kosovo

In the coming months we expect to add new programs in Turkey, Seattle and Albania.

Saving The Children

Via our website we receive 6 requests per week for assistance from desperate parents throughout the world. Most of the time we are able to place these children in other GOL programs; however, on occasion we will sponsor children directly with our own funds. This year alone GOLI sponsored 9 children for open-heart surgeries. This includes the cost of their surgery ($5,000 on average) and airfares for the child and one parent ($2,000 on average).
GOLI has also focused over the past 6 months on developing regional approaches to helping children. One example of this was when we arranged for 5 Iraqi children to be operated on at a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey. Iraq does not have the ability to care for its own children and Turkey has hospitals that are able to operate on children suffering from congenital heart defects. GOLI’s ability to access a network of 75 affiliated hospitals allows us to bring care to those that in the past would have perished. By working within regions we will lesson the stress that traveling far away from home brings to children.

In Summary

The year 2009 has proven to be one transition for Gift of Life International (GOLI). Through the implementation of the “Our Hearts Are In Uganda’ global initiative, GOLI has established itself as an organization which GOL programs around the world can look to for support and innovation. Thirty-two GOL programs participated in the “Our Hearts Are In Uganda” initiative and because of this effort 55 Ugandan children received their life-saving surgeries. Additionally, a strategy for training the doctors at the Uganda Heart Institute has been formulated. Next year the ‘Our Hearts are In...’ program will focus on another country and we expect that more GOL programs will participate than did in 2009.

We continue to build partnerships with other non-governmental organizations around the world, with the common goal of helping children that today are in despair. These partnerships will lead to greater funding for our projects and also allow us to reach more children.

All of our efforts are directed toward the ultimate goal of saving the lives of 3,000 children in 2010.

Gift of Life International 2008 Accomplishments

Creation Of Regular Newsletter
Hiring Of Executive Director
Provided Insurance Option to Gift Of Life Programs Worldwide
Survey of All Gift of Life Programs Completed
Grace Agwaru And Brett Halvorson’s Representation of Gift of Life Programs Worldwide
Identification of Potential Gift of Life Programs in Haiti, Colombia, Seattle, Ocala (FL), Pearl River (NY), Turkey, Lebanon, Bangladesh, and Kosovo
Sponsorship of Conference in Dominican Republic Which Highlighted the Need to Develop Sustainable Pediatric Cardiac Care Programs in Developing Countries
Conducting of Missions to Haiti and Uganda Which Identified Over 400 Children in Need of Care
Celebrated the Saving of Gift of Life’s 10,000th Child Worldwide
Developed a Chairman’s Council to Raise Sustainable Monies on a Reliable Basis
Heightened Gift of Life Visibility Within Rotary
Heightened Gift of Life Exposure to National and International Foundations
Instituting Initial Stages of Planning for the ‘Our Hearts are in Uganda’ Project Which Will Take Place in 2009