A Special Presentation
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Sixteen years ago, realizing that one of the unanswered medical problems of indigent children around the world was a lack of access to high technology surgeries, one of the founders of Doctors without Borders, decided to found an organization which would bring children to Paris for open heart surgery. Eventually, this organization was replicated in London, Brussels, Beirut, and Coimbra, Portugal.
After many successful open heart surgeries on poor children, it was realized that a far more practical solution to a burgeoning worldwide problem was to bring the surgeons to the children. In this way, far more children could be helped, and they would not need to be removed from their familial and societal environments. In addition, hospital teams could train local cardiologists and surgeons in modern methods and techniques. This charity, called Chaine de L’Espoir, in France, Chain of Hope in England, Cadeia de Esperanca in Portugal and Chaine de L’Espoir in Lebanon were successful, having operated on more than 7000 children in developing countries and having established hospitals in Senegal, Cambodia and Mozambique.
In 2001, Philippe Lerch, who had been remarkably successful in raising millions of dollars for the hospital in Cambodia, was asked to form a branch of Chaine de L’Espoir in the US. It was decided to call the organization Surgeons of Hope Foundation. In its first five years, the organization has had remarkable success, obtaining its 501(c)3 status and receiving an initial founding grant from the Central Presbyterian Church in the City of New York. With offices provided pro bono by Publicis Group, Surgeons of Hope was able to send its first medical mission to Cambodia in 2005, followed by a second mission in 2006. Now a fully American foundation, looking to establish a new hospital in the Western hemisphere, Surgeons of Hope looks forward to a future of healing, curing, and training.
We are planning a medical mission in December, 2006 to Maputo, Mozambique, in 2007 and to Kabul Afghanistan. Our mission to Mozambique will be the first time cardiac surgery has been performed in that country, and in Kabul, it will be the first time cardiac surgery has been performed there by Americans surgeons.