Asssuit Story

Gift of Life North East Ohio had been serving one child at a time at our partner hospital since 2003. It was great for that child and family but was not a sustainable model. We set out to change our approach. Our goal is to establish World Children's Heart Surgery Centers located in regions of need with a local teaching hospital. We want to use the medical brigade approach combined with other partners to set up, equip, teach and train local centers to function on their own.

Our first opportunity to do so came with meeting Dr. Ahmed Farouk, a young pediatric cardio thoracic surgeon and professor from Asssuit University. He came to Cleveland as a Case Western Reserve University PhD fellow in connection with Dr. Hani Hennein, then head of Pediatric Cardio/Thoracic Surgery at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. Dr. Farouk became part of our Gift of Life NEO and part of our planning to find another way. Together we connected with some new partners and conceived of the idea to make Asssuit University our first World Children's Heart Surgery Center. Each partner brought key elements together; equipment and training and long term commitment.

We have partnered with;  Med-Wish International (medwish.org) , a creation of Dr. Lee Ponsky of University Hospital's of Cleveland. Med Wish recycles surplus hospital equipment and supplies for re-use in the developing world at nominal cost, avoiding our surplus being sent to land fills and;

International Children's Heart Foundation (babyheart.org), a creation of Dr. William Novick out of Memphis Tennessee which is dedicated to teaching and training pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons in developing regions of the world while performing life saving surgeries via a multiple visit medical brigade model and;
Asssuit University ( www.aun.edu.eg ) , a large urban campus with 7 teaching hospitals located in the heart of Egypt. To us, it is the “Ohio State of Egypt”. The President of Asssuit and the Director of the School of Medicine have personally committed to make this partnership work and to support in-country expenses as an equal partner.

In March of 2009 Gift of Life NEO shipped a 40" container with the surgery/PICU suite from Med-Wish in Cleveland in to Alexandria, Egypt. Asssuit University met the container and delivered it to Asssuit University's Children's Hospital. Dr. Farouk and Dr. Minshawy (head of the pediatric surgery team) led the set up of the surgery suite. It was completed and dedicated for use in December 2009. They conducted their first basic surgery in January. ICHF's Dr. Novick assembled a 17 person international team stretching from Lahore, Pakistan to Vancouver, Canada. They arrived in mid March 2010 and the teaching process began, handling 14 complex cases in 10 days. These cases previously could not have been served in Egypt. The equipment and the two team's performance were excellent. Both Asssuit and ICHF are assessing the need for the next visit in October. We are working on creating additional Gift of Life support both in Egypt and the USA for follow up brigades. We are well on our way to the goal of Asssuit University becoming a Gift of Life Hospital capable of serving Egypt and her neighbors.

Ken Fogle and Jim Frame
Gift of Life North East Ohio