Palestinian children take heart

MARTIN JOHNSTON talks to a New Zealand heart surgeon who was so moved by the plight of sick Palestinian children that he travelled to the Middle East to operate on them.

While the United States was under attack from terrorists on September 11, Auckland surgeon Dr Alan Kerr was repairing children's hearts at a Palestinian hospital.

And he saw such great need that he hopes to organise a second visit and establish permanent links to help Palestinian doctors.

In August and September, Dr Kerr, of Green Lane Hospital, was part of a medical team that performed heart surgery on 18 children in Gaza's Sharif Hospital and in Ramallah Hospital on the West Bank.

The trip was organised by CardioStart, an international humanitarian aid organisation which provides free heart surgery in many poor countries, and financed by the Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

The children, aged from three months to 12 years, had a range of congenital heart problems, such as hole in the heart, where a gap in an internal wall allows blood to pass incorrectly between chambers.

Dr Kerr said a colleague suggested he become involved after she met a Cardiostart leader at a Canadian conference.

"I'm always on for an adventure and I also knew the Palestinian people were having a rather hard time."

He was accompanied by a paediatric-cardiac anaesthetist and intensive-care nurse from Auckland, but some Canadian members of the team pulled out at the last minute because of the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Dr Kerr said Israeli security officials confiscated half his load of heart valves and other donated medical supplies packaged in sterile bottles when he was boarding an Israeli aircraft in Hong Kong.

"Maybe they were looking for semtex explosives."

A US anaesthetist on the team had a large quantity of anaesthetic drugs confiscated, forcing them to use inferior drugs. The drugs were returned at the end of the trip when a US senator intervened, but Dr Kerr never learned what happened to his supplies.

He said the hospital buildings were adequate and the heart-lung machines top quality, but the facilities were otherwise poorly equipped and the staff not well trained.

"We were short of basic equipment like gloves, sutures and gowns. We would never have got by without the stuff we took.

"The Palestinians face terrible problems at the moment. They are desperate for help and desperate to get us back there."

Around 100 children were waiting for heart treatment when he first visited. Some had died waiting and the conditions of others had become inoperable.

Dr Kerr understood they had previously been treated at Israeli hospitals, but could not now get to them because of travel restrictions, and faced hospital fees.

He hoped to take a team of Auckland and US doctors and nurses for a return trip next April, but only if the fighting settled down.

He also hoped to provide training for Palestinian doctors and arrange for some to come to Green Lane for a mentoring programme.