Rotary Club of Palgrave International Partnership Success Story
In the summer of 2018, Dr. Syed Imtiaz Ahmad, a member of the Rotary Club of Palgrave (RCP) in Canada was approached by Dr. Amal El Sisi, Professor of General Pediatrics and Neonatology at Cairo University Pediatric Hospital and Head of Neonatal Cardiology Unit in Egypt. Dr. El Sisi was approaching RCP on behalf of the Rotary Club of El Tahrir (RCT) in Cairo to explore the possibility of support from RCP for their project on Heart2Heart-Pediatric Catheter Non- Invasive Cardiac Procedures.
On a visit to Cairo in October 2018, Dr. Ahmad of RCP attended an El Tahrir Rotary Club meeting convened specially to discuss the Heart2Heart project.
Egypt is a country with a population of 100 million and a birth rate of 2.9 million meaning that around 3 million children are born each year; and around 35 thousand children are born with congenital heart disease. 50% of those need intervention either surgically or non-surgically. This is a big economic burden on the economy of Egypt. A Rotary project is needed and it is essential because the National Health Insurance in Egypt cannot cover all children with congenial heart disease, so they die on the waiting list unless they receive help from sources such as the proposed Rotary project. The national Health Insurance does not cover also the noninvasive catheter procedures. The project has a target of 17, 000 cases of which two thirds will need intervention whether catheter or open-heart surgeries. The target is the sick children who need catheter interventions for their heart defects. The project is aimed at saving families and in the process saving the children, expecting to treat 22-25 children with heart defects in Cairo and Upper Egypt. In addition, the project proposes to treat patients in remote upper Egypt (Suhag Governorate), and train young doctors, technicians and specialized nurses in the Catheter lab and ICU on the procedures and the aftercare of these children by transferring specialized knowledge.
Rotary Club of El Tahrir (RCT) had already provided financial support for 28 cases over the previous two years. However, the need is much greater requiring urgent scaling up of their work. RCT started preparing contents of a Rotary Global Grant application for this purpose and sought support internationally.
The Rotary Global Grant application, GG1986790, was prepared by the Rotary Club Weiz in Austria as the sponsoring partner, and El Tahrir in Egypt as the host. Other partners are Tulln Club in Austria, Hazel Grove Club in UK, Westmount Rotary Club and Rotary Club of Palgrave, both in Canada. The Rotary Foundation approved this global grant. H2H. project work has now been in operation for several months, saving lives of infants and delivering skills development training to health care providers for infants. Take a look at this short video.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kxyPrSC-U3LKEar_TmgDR9DFtoUubTvY/view