GIFT OF LIFE CELEBRATES 91 SURGERIES

Pictures: Fred J. Campagna of the Northern Valley Rotary Club after receiving the John J. Hartman Memorial Award. PDG Joseph Laureni, who served this year as Chairman of the Gift of Life Foundation, and Nikki Mederos of Northern Hudson Rotary.

Rotary District 7490’s Gift of Life Foundation Dinner on February 13th celebrated 91 cardiac surgeries that were performed under its auspices last year. Working with the Ukrainian Gift of Life Foundation, District 7490’s Gift of Life Foundation sponsored 46 surgeries that were performed by Ukrainian doctors in that nation, while a District medical mission performed 26 surgeries in the Philippines last fall. A second medical mission performed 13 additional surgeries in Uganda, while six surgeries took place in hospitals in New Jersey and New York.

David K. Whitlock, a member of the Ridgewood Rotary Club who is chairman of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, noted that since its inception in 1986, the Foundation has sponsored more than 1,000 cardiac surgeries – indeed over the last 29 years, the Foundation has sponsored 1,020 surgeries, with more than 640 of those surgeries having taken place since 2006.

The surgeries are generally performed on children from abroad, since heart defects in children born in the United States are treated shortly after they are born. But the Gift of Life Foundation has in fact sponsored surgeries for five American children, one each in 1991, 1992 and 1992, and two in 2005.

Responding to complaints that American children in need of heart surgeries were being neglected, the then District Governor Joseph Laureni, speaking to the Jersey City Rotary Club on February 7, 2008, said then that if a Rotarian knew of a child in need of heart surgery, the Foundation would seek to provide it.

Three hospitals in New Jersey and two in New York work with the Gift of Life Foundation performing surgeries, while Rotary families host the families of children who undergo those surgeries. Children’s Hospital of New Jersey at Newark Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Paterson and The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J. participate in the surgeries, as do Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx and Westchester Medical Center Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, N.Y.

The full article was in our February Newsletter(pdf).