Pediatric Cardiac Surgery - EKC Building Block
Gary Raff, MD
Curriculum Vitea
Congenital heart disease is the principal cause of death for children worldwide. Of the 1,000,000 children born with congenital heart disease each year, 800,000 may die as a result of their life-threatening condition. In most instances, the countries in which these children are born have no experienced pediatric doctors and lack the adequate hospital facilities to care for them.
These, otherwise, healthy children face terminal consequences without immediate life saving treatments and/or surgery. The impact of this reality can be devastating to a young family who only weeks prior had the highest hopes and greatest expectations that their newborn child would be healthy. These life saving techniques require great skill at great cost.
EKC endeavors to support the various Pediatric Cardio-Pulmonary programs across the US and abroad to provide the resources and training they need to perform these life saving procedures. We provide ‘Life Flights’ to foreign children and their families to carry them to the nearest heart teams, in neighboring countries, who have the facilities and resources to aide their survival.
We work with multi-disciplinary medical teams to provide them with the resources and equipment to travel to correspondent country public hospitals, leaving a rich resource of medical knowledge and equipment; with the goal of building a self-sustained local medical program.
In addition, EKC endeavors to provide these children and their families the resources and financial assistance they need to cope with their ordeal and empower their recovery.
- Where possible all Grants are paid directly to third party providers to ensure the allocated funds are used for the intended purpose.
The Building Blocks of EKC
- Pediatric Cardiac Surgery
- Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery
- Pediatric Cancer Support
- Youth Empowerment
