After traveling over 600 miles with his father from a remote village in northwest Zambia, 9-year-old Richard Mbimbi underwent heart surgery at the National Heart Hospital in Lusaka on July 13.

Richard had rheumatic heart disease, an incapacitating condition that developed after a routine strep throat infection went untreated due to his family’s lack of access to antibiotics. The condition damaged two of Richard’s heart valves.

A team of pediatric cardiac surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists from Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) at Sylvan Adams Children’s Hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Holon traveled to Zambia to supervise Richard’s surgery.

“My son is good,” Richard’s father, Robert Mbimbi, told The Times of Israel by telephone after the surgery. “The Zambian and Israeli doctors helped save the life of my child.”

The Israeli medical team assisted in 10 pediatric open-heart surgeries during their week-long mission at the Lusaka hospital and mentored the hospital’s pediatric cardiac unit staff, as well as several doctors who joined the mission from neighboring Tanzania.

While they were there, the team also unveiled a new $200,000 (NIS 608,000) LivaNova S-5 heart-lung machine, which temporarily takes over the work of a child’s heart and lungs during surgery.

Donated by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Bergman Family Charitable Foundation, it is the second machine in the country of 22.5 million people, which once lacked a single pediatric cardiac surgeon.

Strengthening the doctors ‘on the ground’

The machine and other specialized tools are part of a $3 million cooperative and infrastructure development program between SACH and Zambia that began in 2007.

The mission deepens relations between Zambia and Israel, which opened an embassy in Zambia in August 2025, almost 35 years after Jerusalem and Lusaka renewed relations.

Joining the mission were Wolfson pediatric intensive care specialist Dr. Oren Zipper and pediatric cardiac surgeon Dr. Hagi Dekel, who supervised Dr. Zakias Moonde Muulu, a Zambian pediatric........

© The Times of Israel