Novick Cardiac Alliance

Our goal is that in the future all children with heart disease, no matter where they are born, will be able to receive the medical and surgical care they require to live a long and healthy life.

We collaborate with local hospitals, governments, humanitarian organizations, and Health Ministries to provide total cardiac care to children in developing countries. This collaboration will enable local health-care authorities to build Pediatric Cardiac care services in-country and in time eliminate the need to send these children abroad for surgery.
We educate local health-care professionals and work with their educational institutions to improve the standard of training and hence care provided to children with heart disease. Education includes clinical bedside teaching, didactic lectures, and ad hoc teaching sessions on site.

We have both permanent and volunteer staff to carry out our pediatric cardiac care health initiatives. Such a setting allows us to have teams in the field simultaneously providing clinical services to the children and education to the local healthcare professionals. Fundraising is the key to being able to provide more service in Low and Middle-Income countries. Therefore we seek funding sources at every level, private individuals, civic organizations, foundations both private and public as well as corporate support and support from the countries' own Ministry of Health or Finance.

We have the ability to expand our services so that we are making 40-50 trips annually operating on more than 800 children and teaching multiple teams locally simultaneously.

Since our humble beginning in November 2014 we have operated on 1999 children with heart disease in the following countries; China (Beijing), Ecuador (Guayaquil), Honduras (Tegucigalpa), Iran (Tehran, Zahedan), Iraq (Najaf, Karbala, Babylon), Kyrgyzstan (Biskek), Lebanon (Al Rachaya), Libya (Benghazi, Tobruk, Tripoli), Macedonia (Skopje), Morocco (Rabat), Nigeria (Enugu, Oyo), Pakistan (Rawalpindi), Russia (Kemerovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh) and Ukraine (Kharkiv, Kyiv) a total of 14 countries and 23 cities.

Each city receives training and education of the local healthcare professionals and if the cities are not too far apart doctors and technicians from other cities visit us for additional training in pediatric cardiac care. We have developed sustainable programs in Beijing, Guayaquil, Tegucigalpa, Tehran, Karbala, Skopje, Rabat, Rawalpindi, Kemerovo, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Kharkiv and Kyiv which are all independently capable of providing substantial pediatric cardiac care.

Several sites still require multiple trips per year for additional time before they will be independently caring for these children and able to establish sustainable programs. We are committed to continuing to visit these sites to help the children and build the capacity of the local team.

We have a number of programs in the developmental stages; Cuenca (Ecuador) where we are simply waiting for COVID-19 quarantine issues to be resolved. Similarly, we have a program ready to launch in Lubumbashi (DRC) waiting on COVID-19 border closure and quarantine to be lifted. We are working with a hospital in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) to get infrastructure upgrades sponsored and performed so that it reaches the level needed to carry our pediatric cardiac care. We are also implementing an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, heart support device for heart failure) course in Kharkiv which will begin when COVID-19 restrictions in Ukraine are relaxed.

Projects on the horizon are improving pediatric cardiac surgical services in Ibn Al Bitar Cardiac Center in Baghdad and instituting a pediatric cardiac surgical service in Basra, Iraq. Our future efforts on the African continent include helping improve programs in Addis Abba, Ethiopia, and Dodoma, Tanzania in the near future.

The magnitude of the deficit for pediatric cardiac care in Low and Middle-Income countries (LMIC) demands that we continue to train as many individuals in LMIC as we can.