“Heart surgery is an art.” Dr. William Novick, ICHF Heart Surgeon.
If heart surgery is an art, then a Remedy Mission would be the art studio. It’s the place where teaching happens and inspiration is born. It’s a place where masterpieces are created alongside artists. But it’s an art that everybody in the heart center gets to play a role in.
Whereas an artist can create a beautiful piece on his own, a heart surgeon can’t perform a flawless surgery without a team around him. When they work together and finish their part, the piece is carefully passed along where it’s taken over by the nurses in the intensive care unit. Without a strong nursing staff, the masterpiece would never be completed.
Teaching all of this is an art as well. In the same day a local surgeon is having his skills refined as he patches a hole in a heart and the nurses in the ICU are being taught the foundations of nursing.
In the West, we have benefited from governments who have been able to spend BILLIONS on health care, education, and creating awareness about best practices, and things like hygiene from the time we were in elementary school. At Iraq’s lowest point under Saddam, the Ba’ath regime spent less than one dollar per person on health care each year. While other parts of the world were thriving, Iraq’s health care system – along with their doctors and nurses – weren’t given what they needed to keep up.
Our Remedy Mission comes at a pivotal time in Iraq. A time where they now have the opportunity to be invest like never before. It was sobering when we heard that little Alawi is trying to fight off a bacterial infection in his chest, something that is easily caused in an ICU which doesn’t even have a sink or soap with which to wash your hands. Don’t worry, we’re trying to work with local officials to get that retrofitted!
Through our Remedy Missions we’re helping raise up local health care systems that excel in the complex but also in the fundamentals of taking care of children. All of it goes into creating a masterpiece.
We couldn’t do this without a coalition that cared as much about this as you do! You’re a part of the masterpiece.
If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove.
