0.25
It is fulfilling at heart. I think that this project gave a different meaning to my life. A Doctor plays God a little bit to a certain degree. I think in this type of job, we play God more than a little bit.
With violence endemic outside, some Israeli doctors and nurses are trying to do their bit for peace. The movement is called Save the Childs Heart, a voluntary project for children with heart disease. Complicated life-saving operations are being performed on children who are sometimes only a couple of months old. The children come from countries that dont have the facilities for such complicated procedures. While the doctors are Israeli, a third of the children are Palestinian.
We meet three doctors and a couple of American volunteers.
Doctor Akiva Tamir, formerly retired, should be playing with his grandchildren by now but he cannot stop. During his work he is focussed and introspective. Looking back he thinks of the children he has treated.
1.56
(DOCTOR HOURI)-
During the last three years, we have had like many, many, many events of suicide bombers. A lot of people died on the street, and when you go back home, you turn on your TV and you see that, I used to go home and cry like a child I was going absolutely mad.
But this is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem with these families with children; if you are not going to treat them then they are going to die. These children are not to blame, they have done nothing.
On the other side we live in this place, with this situation.
Doctor Sion Houri is responsible for keeping this project running. He says he has never got used to treating Palestinian children in Israel.
(DOCTOR TAMIR)-
Some of them have a disease that is very severe and we have to decide not to take them because the likelihood of succeeding is so low.
Doctor Sion Houri is responsible for keeping this project running. He says he has never got used to treating Palestinian children in Israel.
Some of them have a disease that is very severe and we have to decide not to take them because the likelihood of succeeding is so low. But in another case they might have succeeded. So it brings up a lot of issues and my mind is occupied a lot with these thought.
(DR HOURI)-
It happened that a child was treated by us and we actually saved his life, because he was about to die, and he went home, but he was coming back here to be seen by Dr. Tamir once every year and a year ago we heard he was actually shot by the soldiers.
4.09
(DR SANNON)-
We take it as a very heavy responsibility. We know that our decisions actually send people to death or to live. Its a heavy burden.
The doctors are helped by two American volunteers - Phillip and Brian. They pick up the children and bring them home after the operation, and thus form the connection between the two parties. Time and time again they pass the front line with mortally ill children. They are convinced their work improves the chances of peace.
(VOLUNTEER)-
You wonder if what your doing makes any difference. Personally speaking, I think it does, even if you are touching one mother who comes and spends a month in the hospital; she sees that the Israelis are not the terrible enemy the Satan that they hear of. The doctors, they see very tender Palestinian women who love their children.
Every week we feel like we are just a drop in an ocean of hate. Were trying to provide a little bit of sanity in a mad-mad world here.
A typical day in Intensive Care: Doctor Tamir is examining a six-year old girl. The heart disorder is life threatening.
The late doctor Ami Cohen started this project, almost 10 years ago. His vision was to save the lives of young patients with heart failure from poor countries by giving them free treatment. He wanted to go to countries like China, Moldavia and Ethiopia. Akiva TamIr was the first doctor to join him.
6.30
(DR TAMIR)-
I remember when, at the very beginning we were in Maldova, and a mother came to us with a baby that was very very blue, and the surgery was complex. We were not doing that kind of surgery at the beginning. I was freaking inside because we had decided not to take very severe cases.
Anyway, we decided that if this had been an Israeli child we would have taken him anyway, so we took him and he was doing very well afterwards. He had two surgeries and he had a complete recovery eventually.
(DR SANNON)-
There are many situations, especially when we are abroad, when we have to screen patients we are sometimes facing maybe two hundred patients waiting for us. We need to screen them all in four days perhaps .For every patient we only have a couple of minutes. Maybe hell never see a doctor again.
In 10 minutes we have to decide about his destiny. Will he be treated or not? And when? In those ten minutes you have to use all your knowledge and make the right decision
When you make the wrong one, its fatal for the child.
Children from all over the world came to Israel to be treated, then the doctors realized that closer to home there was another group who fulfilled the requirements of the project: Palestinian heart patients.
On Palestinain land the medical facilities were equally poor and there was no money for this kind of life saving procedure. Now a third of patients are Palestinian, and more than 350 Palestinian children have been saved from certain death.
8.31
There is little communication with the parents, often they cannot travel with their child they dont dare to. There is only a handful of mothers in the hospital. The doctors leave them be, and focus on the often impossible choices.
In this bed lies Sjahed Ahmen, two months old. He was brought in from Gaza in a critical condition. It appears to be hopeless. Doctor Tamir is facing an impossible dilemma, because treating Sjached will exclude treatment of other children
(DR TAMIR)-
I examined the child. And I concluded he had a complex heart lesion. In the right chamber, a part of the valve was missing. Serious narrowing of the pulmonary artery and abnormal income from the pulmonary veins. Due to this combination my calculated risk is that he wouldnt survive an operation.
Tamir presents the case to his medical team, three doctors are for an operation, three are against it. An impossible moral dilemma, because giving Sjaheed an operation is to turn another child down.
Another dilemma is added for the doctors Sjaheeds nationality. However, nationality cannot, and should not, be taken into consideration - that would be at the cost of others. As a professional you have to put your sympathy or antipathy aside, says Tamir. But he doesnt sound convinced.
10.01
(INTERVIEWER)-I cant believe this has never cross your mind?
(DR TAMIR)-
Sometimes I think about it, of course. For example, a child came in that was wounded after throwing rocks at soldiers.
He had a heart problem. It was a teenager. Naturally I thought he was involved with hostile actions against us. I dont ignore everything, as if Im a superhuman being.
The next day, the decision has been made to operate on Sjahed anyway. Dr Sannon performs the procedure.
(DR SANNON)-
You have to take everything into account, but when you are facing a kid you find that you need to give the kid a chance.
Directly after the operation, complications arise. But the doctors cannot help Sjaheed anymore. We can only wait while the child is kept alive by a machine. It is now just gone 10pm.
I dont think the childs prospects are too good at this moment.
(INTERVIEWER) -Do the parents know?
Yes, they know. We spoke with the father in Gaza and he knows the situation is severe. He knew before the operation. They came in with a dying child and we had to resuscitate him. They know we are doing are best to save him.
- Can I ask you the reason why the parents are not here?
Sometimes the parents are here, sometimes they prefer to go back home because they have other kids staying there. They choose to be away and ask us to inform them how things are going.
13.06
However, there is no time to dwell on this; the next operation presents itself. Because it is an Ethiopian girl, the project employs an Ethiopian nurse to guide the young patients.
Its 8am.
(DR SANNON)-
For this case we need to go inside the heart, to make the repair we need to stop the heart. You may see on the monitor a flat-line. The action of a machine will take over the function of the heart.
Meanwhile Sjaheds body is returned to his parents
(VOLUNTEER BRIAN OR PHILLIP)-
It may be possible, I have been told that the guards may not let us pass
This is Brian with Phillip, and we have Sjahed Ahmen, and we will try to cross with the body. We will be there in one hour and able to cross soon after that.
(INTERVIEWER)- Someone is going to meet you there?
On the other side the family will be waiting. But we had to let them know what time we will be getting there, because it takes them about an hour and a half.
16.02
(DR SANNON)-
The patient is fully connected to the machine, so we have stopped circulation, and now life is sustained by the machine itself.
16.33
(VOLUNTEER)-
Here we are at the crossing point. Were going yo be waiting here a little while, and the parents will wait on the other side. Well be bringing out all this paperwork, telling them what took place in the surgery and the attempt to save this life. And then we take the body across and hand it back to the family.
Today is one of the sad days and fortunately this happens very seldom, I can say that in my year and a half here this is only the second baby that weve brought back dead. The percentage of babies that are saved there is very very high. There are a whole lot of great stories to be told out there. Visiting the families there are 250 to 300 that can testify to their children receiving heart surgery in Israel. They are running around when otherwise they would be dead, or else lying listlessly in their living room unable to get up and even walk.
(INTERVIEWER)- Whats the procedure here?
Taking time to make sure that there is not a vehicle coming across here that might have a bomb in even ambulances have been used unfortunately. You have to think about every possible thing, thats what this checkpoints all about.
18.55
The parents have been on the other side of the border waiting for hours for the body. But half way through Brian and Phillip are halted. The Israeli soldiers appear ruthless and lacking in compassion. But the truth is more complicated. These young soldiers are terrified: nowhere in the area is the tension as high as here.
19.15
(DR SANNON)-
The operation was uneventful with no problems. One of the most exciting things is when you see the heart start working again.
19.42
In the end, Phillip ahs to walk over to the other side of the border, carrying a body.
In the end the Ethiopian girl regained consciousness. As a medic the doctor does not care about the background of his patients. He is convinced the procedures with the Palestinian children serve an extra purpose.
(DR SANNON)-
We think that what we do for the Palestinian kids is something that might make peace more achievable. I believe that every family and child that goes home is a bid for peace small seed that grow so that everyone knows about what we did. It might show people that it can be done, that we can live together.
21.14 END.
It is fulfilling at heart. I think that this project gave a different meaning to my life. A Doctor plays God a little bit to a certain degree. I think in this type of job, we play God more than a little bit.
With violence endemic outside, some Israeli doctors and nurses are trying to do their bit for peace. The movement is called Save the Childs Heart, a voluntary project for children with heart disease. Complicated life-saving operations are being performed on children who are sometimes only a couple of months old. The children come from countries that dont have the facilities for such complicated procedures. While the doctors are Israeli, a third of the children are Palestinian.
We meet three doctors and a couple of American volunteers.
Doctor Akiva Tamir, formerly retired, should be playing with his grandchildren by now but he cannot stop. During his work he is focussed and introspective. Looking back he thinks of the children he has treated.
1.56
(DOCTOR HOURI)-
During the last three years, we have had like many, many, many events of suicide bombers. A lot of people died on the street, and when you go back home, you turn on your TV and you see that, I used to go home and cry like a child I was going absolutely mad.
But this is one part of the problem. The other part of the problem with these families with children; if you are not going to treat them then they are going to die. These children are not to blame, they have done nothing.
On the other side we live in this place, with this situation.
Doctor Sion Houri is responsible for keeping this project running. He says he has never got used to treating Palestinian children in Israel.
(DOCTOR TAMIR)-
Some of them have a disease that is very severe and we have to decide not to take them because the likelihood of succeeding is so low.
Doctor Sion Houri is responsible for keeping this project running. He says he has never got used to treating Palestinian children in Israel.
Some of them have a disease that is very severe and we have to decide not to take them because the likelihood of succeeding is so low. But in another case they might have succeeded. So it brings up a lot of issues and my mind is occupied a lot with these thought.
(DR HOURI)-
It happened that a child was treated by us and we actually saved his life, because he was about to die, and he went home, but he was coming back here to be seen by Dr. Tamir once every year and a year ago we heard he was actually shot by the soldiers.
4.09
(DR SANNON)-
We take it as a very heavy responsibility. We know that our decisions actually send people to death or to live. Its a heavy burden.
The doctors are helped by two American volunteers - Phillip and Brian. They pick up the children and bring them home after the operation, and thus form the connection between the two parties. Time and time again they pass the front line with mortally ill children. They are convinced their work improves the chances of peace.
(VOLUNTEER)-
You wonder if what your doing makes any difference. Personally speaking, I think it does, even if you are touching one mother who comes and spends a month in the hospital; she sees that the Israelis are not the terrible enemy the Satan that they hear of. The doctors, they see very tender Palestinian women who love their children.
Every week we feel like we are just a drop in an ocean of hate. Were trying to provide a little bit of sanity in a mad-mad world here.
A typical day in Intensive Care: Doctor Tamir is examining a six-year old girl. The heart disorder is life threatening.
The late doctor Ami Cohen started this project, almost 10 years ago. His vision was to save the lives of young patients with heart failure from poor countries by giving them free treatment. He wanted to go to countries like China, Moldavia and Ethiopia. Akiva TamIr was the first doctor to join him.
6.30
(DR TAMIR)-
I remember when, at the very beginning we were in Maldova, and a mother came to us with a baby that was very very blue, and the surgery was complex. We were not doing that kind of surgery at the beginning. I was freaking inside because we had decided not to take very severe cases.
Anyway, we decided that if this had been an Israeli child we would have taken him anyway, so we took him and he was doing very well afterwards. He had two surgeries and he had a complete recovery eventually.
(DR SANNON)-
There are many situations, especially when we are abroad, when we have to screen patients we are sometimes facing maybe two hundred patients waiting for us. We need to screen them all in four days perhaps .For every patient we only have a couple of minutes. Maybe hell never see a doctor again.
In 10 minutes we have to decide about his destiny. Will he be treated or not? And when? In those ten minutes you have to use all your knowledge and make the right decision
When you make the wrong one, its fatal for the child.
Children from all over the world came to Israel to be treated, then the doctors realized that closer to home there was another group who fulfilled the requirements of the project: Palestinian heart patients.
On Palestinain land the medical facilities were equally poor and there was no money for this kind of life saving procedure. Now a third of patients are Palestinian, and more than 350 Palestinian children have been saved from certain death.
8.31
There is little communication with the parents, often they cannot travel with their child they dont dare to. There is only a handful of mothers in the hospital. The doctors leave them be, and focus on the often impossible choices.
In this bed lies Sjahed Ahmen, two months old. He was brought in from Gaza in a critical condition. It appears to be hopeless. Doctor Tamir is facing an impossible dilemma, because treating Sjached will exclude treatment of other children
(DR TAMIR)-
I examined the child. And I concluded he had a complex heart lesion. In the right chamber, a part of the valve was missing. Serious narrowing of the pulmonary artery and abnormal income from the pulmonary veins. Due to this combination my calculated risk is that he wouldnt survive an operation.
Tamir presents the case to his medical team, three doctors are for an operation, three are against it. An impossible moral dilemma, because giving Sjaheed an operation is to turn another child down.
Another dilemma is added for the doctors Sjaheeds nationality. However, nationality cannot, and should not, be taken into consideration - that would be at the cost of others. As a professional you have to put your sympathy or antipathy aside, says Tamir. But he doesnt sound convinced.
10.01
(INTERVIEWER)-I cant believe this has never cross your mind?
(DR TAMIR)-
Sometimes I think about it, of course. For example, a child came in that was wounded after throwing rocks at soldiers.
He had a heart problem. It was a teenager. Naturally I thought he was involved with hostile actions against us. I dont ignore everything, as if Im a superhuman being.
The next day, the decision has been made to operate on Sjahed anyway. Dr Sannon performs the procedure.
(DR SANNON)-
You have to take everything into account, but when you are facing a kid you find that you need to give the kid a chance.
Directly after the operation, complications arise. But the doctors cannot help Sjaheed anymore. We can only wait while the child is kept alive by a machine. It is now just gone 10pm.
I dont think the childs prospects are too good at this moment.
(INTERVIEWER) -Do the parents know?
Yes, they know. We spoke with the father in Gaza and he knows the situation is severe. He knew before the operation. They came in with a dying child and we had to resuscitate him. They know we are doing are best to save him.
- Can I ask you the reason why the parents are not here?
Sometimes the parents are here, sometimes they prefer to go back home because they have other kids staying there. They choose to be away and ask us to inform them how things are going.
13.06
However, there is no time to dwell on this; the next operation presents itself. Because it is an Ethiopian girl, the project employs an Ethiopian nurse to guide the young patients.
Its 8am.
(DR SANNON)-
For this case we need to go inside the heart, to make the repair we need to stop the heart. You may see on the monitor a flat-line. The action of a machine will take over the function of the heart.
Meanwhile Sjaheds body is returned to his parents
(VOLUNTEER BRIAN OR PHILLIP)-
It may be possible, I have been told that the guards may not let us pass
This is Brian with Phillip, and we have Sjahed Ahmen, and we will try to cross with the body. We will be there in one hour and able to cross soon after that.
(INTERVIEWER)- Someone is going to meet you there?
On the other side the family will be waiting. But we had to let them know what time we will be getting there, because it takes them about an hour and a half.
16.02
(DR SANNON)-
The patient is fully connected to the machine, so we have stopped circulation, and now life is sustained by the machine itself.
16.33
(VOLUNTEER)-
Here we are at the crossing point. Were going yo be waiting here a little while, and the parents will wait on the other side. Well be bringing out all this paperwork, telling them what took place in the surgery and the attempt to save this life. And then we take the body across and hand it back to the family.
Today is one of the sad days and fortunately this happens very seldom, I can say that in my year and a half here this is only the second baby that weve brought back dead. The percentage of babies that are saved there is very very high. There are a whole lot of great stories to be told out there. Visiting the families there are 250 to 300 that can testify to their children receiving heart surgery in Israel. They are running around when otherwise they would be dead, or else lying listlessly in their living room unable to get up and even walk.
(INTERVIEWER)- Whats the procedure here?
Taking time to make sure that there is not a vehicle coming across here that might have a bomb in even ambulances have been used unfortunately. You have to think about every possible thing, thats what this checkpoints all about.
18.55
The parents have been on the other side of the border waiting for hours for the body. But half way through Brian and Phillip are halted. The Israeli soldiers appear ruthless and lacking in compassion. But the truth is more complicated. These young soldiers are terrified: nowhere in the area is the tension as high as here.
19.15
(DR SANNON)-
The operation was uneventful with no problems. One of the most exciting things is when you see the heart start working again.
19.42
In the end, Phillip ahs to walk over to the other side of the border, carrying a body.
In the end the Ethiopian girl regained consciousness. As a medic the doctor does not care about the background of his patients. He is convinced the procedures with the Palestinian children serve an extra purpose.
(DR SANNON)-
We think that what we do for the Palestinian kids is something that might make peace more achievable. I believe that every family and child that goes home is a bid for peace small seed that grow so that everyone knows about what we did. It might show people that it can be done, that we can live together.
21.14 END.