You Just Helped More Kids in 12 Days Than Any 12 Month Period in Our History… for Less!

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Deeya is alive and doing well at home today because of the surgery you provided for her in Iraq!

Wow! What a phenomenal trip it has been these last few weeks as you have brought a new remedy to the children of Iraq through the surgical and nursing team of Dr. William Novick.

It’s high time we update your impact to help Iraqis make a better future for themselves and their children.

The total expense for our first Remedy Mission was approximately $90,000. This amount was further subsidized by the Director of Health in our city and the Kurdish Regional Government in Washington D.C., and the International Children’s Heart Foundation. The balance was underwritten by you! 

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This family was not yet chosen for surgery… they are still waiting for our next Remedy Mission. 

Locally, Remedy Mission was a great success. We ended the week at dinner with the governor and the health director where they invited us to start our next Remedy Mission as quickly as possible. When we suggested May 2010 as a next date, all the surgeons and the health director rallied together to urge us to begin again in February instead. 

Our current proposal is a five year plan comprising four trips per year to make the Sulaymaniyah Cardiac Center a premier facility in the region that is able to perform 12-14 surgeries per week without foreign assistance. We estimate that this will cost $1.5m and we are currently talking with the local authorities in hopes that they will choose to shoulder the majority of that expense. 

During Remedy Mission ICHF and local surgeons performed 25 corrective cardiac procedures. Put differently, we helped more kids in 12 days than we have in any 12 month period to date… at a massive savings compared to our work in Iraq… with hands-on training for Iraqi doctors and nurses! A typical all-inclusive surgery in Istanbul costs us $10,000 (after subsidies). That expense is usually shared among the family of the child, local and international donors. The typical PLC international donor portion of a surgery in Turkey is $3-5k. 100822_irq_hum_remedy_mission_d4_0226

Cody Fisher reviews the list of kids who received surgery and kids still in line for February 2011. 

The numbers for Remedy Mission look much different. Not only are we able to work in partnership with others more during Remedy Missions, but every surgery represents a local development and training opportunity. The all-inclusive price for all partners was approximately $3,600 per child (compared to $10k in Istanbul and much more in the States or Europe). Remedy Mission has taught us a lot about being fiscally and developmentally responsible. Therefore, in an effort to redouble our commitment to long-term local solutions, we will be increasing our Remedy Mission funding in hopes of facilitating four Remedy Missions in our current city in 2011. 

Families are still waiting in line for our help…. Will you be the remedy? Donate the amount of your choice to get our next Remedy Mission off to a strong start!

Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.