KEY POINTS:
Forty New Zealand health workers are giving up part of their holidays to perform life-saving heart surgery in Samoa.
The surgeons, nurses and other practitioners from Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin left yesterday on the 10-day surgical trip to the Pacific country's national hospital.
They are part of a trend in NZ charity healthcare, following a similar trip to Samoa last year, two to Fiji since 2006, children's heart surgery in Palestine and the opening of the Canterbury Charity Hospital last year.
In Apia, the team will replace heart valves in 18 people, most under 25.
Such operations cost $40,000 to $50,000 in NZ and are not otherwise available in Samoa, although the country sends some patients to NZ for the surgery.
The heart valves were damaged by rheumatic fever, a complication of streptococcal throat infection.
"If we don't do these kids' operations now they will die within two years," said the co-ordinator of the mission, Dr Chellaraj Benjamin.
The turn-around in their lives would be dramatic after the surgery, said Dr Benjamin, a radiation oncologist who has helped to set up dialysis units there and in Fiji.
When asked why health workers wanted to give up holidays for such a project, he said: "Because we are saving lives and that is the greatest satisfaction you can have in your life."
Tim Willcox of Auckland City Hospital said there was no difficulty finding people to go.
The trips had important spin-offs, like prompting the construction of a proper oxygen supply at the Apia hospital and the establishment of strong links between clinicians in the two countries.
Mr Willcox is his hospital's chief clinical perfusionist, which involves running the machine that acts as the heart and lungs in open-heart surgery.
MERCY MISSION
* Heart-valve replacement operations on 18 people.
* At the national hospital in Apia, Samoa.
* Forty health practitioners from New Zealand.
* Four tonnes of medical equipment.
* One heart-lung machine.
* Funded by the New Zealand and Samoan governments, New Zealand staff working in their holidays, and suppliers of equipment, transport and accommodation.
