Four children will celebrate this year's International Children's Day in Israel in a particularly exciting way.
Each of the four children came from a different country as part of the activities of the NGO Save a Child's Heart to undergo life-saving heart surgeries.
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Florim from Kosovo, Robert from Ghana, Kauthar from Zanzibar and Kidus from Ethiopia
(Photo: Save a Child's Heart)
All of them were born with malformations causing heart disease and requiring surgery to save their lives. However, this surgery is unavailable in their homelands and so they were flown all the way to Israel to receive the gift of a mended heart.
Israeli doctors at Wolfson Medical Center will perform the surgeries on the children, aged ten months to 16 years.
The children who received their hearts as a gift this year are Florim from Kosovo, Robert from Ghana, Kauthar from Zanzibar and Kidus from Ethiopia.
"In my book, every day that a child’s life is saved is children's day!" Chairman of Save a Child's Heart International Morris Kahn said.
"Saving a child’s heart is not only about saving children's heart in a physical way. The fact that these kids are exposed to different cultures and understand that it is not only them who suffer from a heart condition and having doctors from Israel performing their surgeries - gives them a different perspective of humanity and will definitely affect their future in a better way," Kahn explained.
Save a Child's Heart has treated over 6,000 children from 63 countries over the course of 25 years since its establishment, either during missions to those countries or by bringing the children to Israel for care.