ICHF Missions
One per cent (1%) of the world's population is born with heart disease, and only about a third are actually diagnosed. But to the parents of these unfortunate children the evidence is undeniable. Instead of enjoying his "terrible twos" the child exhausts easily, cries endlessly in pain and frustration at his inability to play with other children and frightens his parents with the specter of death.
In most parts of the U.S. and other developed nations, the family's pediatrician sends such a child to a major medical center, where the congenital defect is repaired, and the youngster matures into a healthy adult, leaving Mom and Dad with normal parental concerns like viruses, report cards and driving.
Imagine the anguish of parents in underdeveloped or remote regions who have no one to work this miracle on their suffering child. Imagine having no alternative to watching your child waste away and die. Often a simple procedure performed by skilled surgeons could change this course and render a happy ending, but no such help exists in their homelands.
The International Children's Heart Foundation strives to put a dent in this unfortunate situation by providing direct care to as many children as possible, sending medications, surgical supplies and diagnostic equipment to medical facilities around the world and helping train surgeons from developing nations in this special field, so that they ultimately can provide care for their own people.
This is our mission, one which we consider very important, one to which we are passionately committed and one which needs your support to be realized.
ICHF Results
The charts show the countries we have visited, number of operations, along with the year to year increase of donated medical supplies and health care volunteers since 1993.
Countries Visited and Proportion of Operations Provided (1993-2001)
Cumulative Operations Abroad (1993-2001)
Donated Goods and Services Cumulative (1994-2001)
Health Care Volunteers Cumulative (1993-2001)
Copyright © 2002 International Children's Heart Foundation -- The International Children's Heart Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)3 charitable organization based in Memphis, Tennessee. We are dedicated to helping children with congenital or acquired heart disease in developing countries throughout the world. We serve all children without respect to their race, religion or sex. Our primary goal is to make ourselves obsolete in the countries that we serve. To this end, we strive to educate the health care professionals in the countries we travel and bring them to the United States for advanced study so that they may better serve their own children. Since midnight, 17 people have visited this website. Each visitor viewed an average of 1.4 pages. We appreciate your interest. Comments regarding , , are always welcome.