Zambia Gets Its First Paediatric Heart Surgeon, Trained in Holon

Save a Child's Heart, founded in 1995 and based at the Sylvan Adams Children's Hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, has trained Zambia's first paediatric cardiac surgeon. Dr Mudaniso Ziwa completed his fellowship in 2024 and now works at the National Heart Hospital in Lusaka. Dr Zakias Moonde Muulu, who arrived in 2022, is in the fifth year of a six year fellowship and is expected back in 2027 as the country's second.

That timescale is the argument. A visiting team can operate on a queue of children and leave; a six year fellowship produces someone who is still there a decade later. Eight doctors are currently in the programme, and the organisation counts more than 160 doctors and nurses trained and around 8,500 children treated from 75 countries.

A surgical mission on 13 and 14 July carried out ten paediatric open heart operations in Zambia, with doctors from Tanzania taking part. Dr Hagi Dekel, a senior paediatric cardiac surgeon, and Dr Oren Zipper, a paediatric intensive care specialist, were among the Israeli team. Simon Fisher is the organisation's executive director.

Equipment moved with the training. A LivaNova S-5 heart and lung machine valued at 200,000 dollars was donated by the American Jewish Committee and the Bergman Family Charitable Foundation, giving Zambia a second such machine. A surgeon without a bypass machine is a surgeon who cannot operate, and a single machine means a single point of failure for a national service.

The cooperative programme behind all of this began in 2007 and is worth about 3 million dollars. Judged by the usual metric of aid, the number of operations, it is small. Judged by whether Zambian children will one day be operated on by Zambian surgeons in Lusaka, it is close to the whole point.