Heritage Snapshot: Part 96

The Open Hearts for Children program continued. “Kim and Kwak surgeries successful. Stop. Letters to Follow.” Thus read the April 11, 1980, telegram from Loma Linda to Korea. It reported the status of the second and third beneficiaries of the Open Hearts for Children program. Jeom Yong Kim and Jin Hwan Kwak, two boys from Keojae Island, Korea, arrived in the United States on March 30, 1980. Eager to promote the human-interest and humanitarian effort, the news media featured Kim's three-hour surgery in the San Bernardino Sun-Telegram. Three thousand people later watched the operation on national Australian television in a series about American hospitals. On May 7, 1980, a six-month-old baby girl from Venezuela became the fourth beneficiary of the Open Hearts for Children program. A short-wave directional radio antenna high atop Loma Linda University Medical Center beamed a report of Ediyan Gallardo’s successful five-hour surgery to relatives in South America. The Open Hearts for Children program now has performed surgery on more than 130 children. They came from Africa, Bangladesh, Belize, Bosnia, China, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Kosovo, Lebanon, Malaysia, Managua, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad, Turkey, and Venezuela. The program helps children who have survived early infancy, are otherwise normal and loved members of their families, and have a correctable condition with expectations for long-term survival. Most of the patients, from 3 to 10 years of age, have heart problems that are corrected by standard procedures routinely performed in the United States during the first two years of life. Even though most of the participants are older, the long-term results are excellent. In 1984 the estate of George T. Warren provided $250,000 to begin an endowment for the program. Through additional gifts, the Open Hearts for Children Endowment has more than doubled. Physicians at the Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital donate their professional services. The fund uses interest from the endowment and additional gifts to pay the Children’s Hospital’s expenses.