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Palestinian MD Lauds Israel for Saving Children

(Canadian Jewish News) Janice Arnold - Palestinian doctor Wafiq Othman is an anesthesiologist who completed six years of training at Save a Child's Heart (SACH), an international humanitarian program based at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. He returned to the West Bank and is now coordinator for all the Palestinian doctors and other medical professionals who come to the program to upgrade desperately needed skills. Othman told a Montreal audience how the program saved his younger brother's life. The boy had congenital heart disease and was operated on in the Palestinian territories, but was not doing well. The SACH team performed further surgery and the 14-year-old is now well enough to be back at school. "When I came to SACH in 2006, it was very hard at the beginning to get used to working with Israelis, finding a way to trust and understand them. But the Wolfson team embraced me, and I quickly became part of the SACH family," he said. Today, five Palestinians are training at SACH, which since its founding in 1996 has treated - free of charge - more than 3,400 children from 48 countries, over half from the Palestinian territories and other neighboring countries including Iraq, Jordan and Syria. "SACH is saving the hearts of children, but it is touching the hearts of all of their families," Othman said.
2014-05-30 00:00:00
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