RwandAir launches Tel Aviv service to help children needing heart treatment
Airline is working with Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart, taking eight children and their families for medical help in the Jewish state this week
Rwanda’s national airline has begun a special service taking children to Israel for cardiac treatment near Tel Aviv.
RwandAir, country’s flag carrier, is working with Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) and took the first eight children and their families this week. The airline only began operating direct flights between Kigali and Tel Aviv last month.
The children’s conditions and medical needs are determined by Israeli physicians who fly out to visit Kigali Teaching Hospital and make their assessments alongside Rwandan counterparts.
The flights are then arranged in liaison with the charity, which already works with children from Tanzania, Zanzibar, Ethiopia, Iraq, Solomon Islands and the Palestinian Authority.
SACH director Simon Fisher said: “This new direct flight between Kigali and Tel Aviv will greatly support our ability to save many more young Rwandan lives in this Israeli-Rwandan partnership.”
The children will be treated and saved at Wolfson Medical Center in Israel, by a team of volunteer doctors who work for this hospital. The humanitarian effort was made possible due to a partnership between Save a SACH and the Rwanda Ministry of Health, the Mitrelli Group, RwandAir, the Australian Orah Foundation and the Israeli Embassy in Rwanda.
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