In developing countries the cost of an ICHF heart surgery vary based upon:

• Size of the medical team
• Lodging for the medical team members
• Transportation for medical team members
• Medical supplies and equipment that has been donated for a trip

However, the typical mission trip costs around $40,000, assuming medical supplies are donated. During a two week trip the medical team typically operates on 20 children. This calculates to an average cost of $2,000 per child. If you compare this to the average cost of one surgery in the US ($30,000), ICHF surgeries are 85% less expensive.

The ICHF fiscal year runs from July through June.

For the 2006-2007 year, ICHF completed 18 trips. In 2007-2008, 20 trips were completed. We increased to 26 trips in the 2008-2009 fiscal year. In the present fiscal year, we have projected to complete 32 surgical mission trips. As ICHF expands its capacity to manage more trips, the number of trips will increase.

All ICHF volunteers, including the medical volunteers are not paid for their work with ICHF. This includes the doctors, nurses and others who make up a medical team. Team members often use their vacation time. In some cases, employers grant time off for humanitarian efforts. However, the ICHF pays medical team members’ trip travel and living expenses such as airfare, food and lodging.

80% of ICHF volunteers make more than one trip. Many continually make trips over a number of years. The satisfaction of saving children, receiving the smiles and endless gratitude of the children and their parents, and training local medical teams to spread the success is compensation enough.

Every day. On the average we receive two to five requests for services each day from developing countries throughout the world.

ICHF has over 1200 medical professionals who are registered and certified to travel and teach with our medical staff.

Simply stated, ICHF needs large renewal grants to fund the surgeries and local developing country medical staff. Additionally, despite the fact we work diligently to gather donations and use volunteers for medical trips, there are expenses incurred as with any business or non-profit organization. These include staff salaries, office operations maintenance ,and mission related expenses such as supplies shipping and occasionally buying medical supplies and medication.

The only limitation in the number of children’s lives we can save is the ability to fund more trips to perform surgeries and train local medical teams.

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