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A Heartwarming Story: Israeli Doctors Saved This Orphan's Life

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DAR ES SALAM, Tazania – As journalists we often tell a story and don't always see what happens down the road. But CBN News traveled to Dar es Salam recently to see how life-saving heart surgery in Israel transformed the life of a Tanzanian orphan.

Fourteen-year-old Esther Mbakati, a Christian from the Massai tribe, has a strong heartbeat, but it wasn't always that way. Though she was born with a normal heart, an untreated throat infection as a young child left her with severe rheumatic heart disease.

CBN News first met Esther five years ago when the Israeli organization Save a Child's Heart (SACH) worked to get her life-saving surgery.

Pediatric cardiologist Dr. Alona Raucher, fondly known as Dr. Alona by her patients, first met Esther in Israel. She examined her recently during a SACH medical mission to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

"When she came to Israel, the valves were leaking so badly that the heart was enlarged to twice the size of a child. She had the size of a heart of an old man and very poor contraction," Dr. Alona told CBN News. 

"And although she was very, very sick, she was very, very happy. She took us over," she added.

An electrocardiogram revealed some good news.

"There was no deterioration in disease since she left Israel," Dr. Alona said.

A Miraculous Journey

SACH is based at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, near Tel Aviv. Esther made what some say was a miraculous journey for the surgery that saved her life. 

"We brought her to the Mater Hospital in Nairobi, (Kenya). And there we were told she needs an operation. Otherwise she may live one (or) one and half more years," explained Angelika Wohlenberg-Kinsey, who founded and runs the orphanage where Esther lives.

During the bus ride home an amazing thing happened.

"[Esther] entertained all the passengers, and they asked me, 'Who is this girl?'" Angelika told CBN News. Esther was eight at the time.

"Then there was a young lady next to me and when I told her she has a heart problem, she needs an operation, she said, 'I just came from SACH, from Israel. I was a volunteer there.  So you could contact them."

Angelika took her advice, looked up SACH on the Internet and sent an email. To her surprise, she learned that a team from SACH was coming in two days to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro near the orphanage. One of them was Tanzanian Dr. Godwin Godfrey.

The team met with Esther and determined she was a good candidate for surgery in Israel.

"I see that as a miracle – the mystery of God," Angelika added.

Lead surgeon and head of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department Dr. Lior Sasson operated on Esther for hours. He told CBN News at the time her heart was dangerously enlarged.

"Instead of sending the blood forward to the body, it came back to the lungs. So she was very limited in very simple tasks – even simple walking, it was difficult for her," Sasson said. "She couldn't even lie in bed. She had to sit all the time."

A Family Reunion

Fast forward to 2016 and a family reunion of sorts! We caught up with Esther during a SACH cardiac medical mission in Tanzania.

Esther came for a checkup and also to visit her Israeli friends.

"For now I feel very better and I thank God because He's been taking care of me from the beginning until now. Because if it (wasn't) God, I could not be here now," she said smiling.

Esther thanked the SACH medical team and said they think of her as family. "So I'm really happy to have Israelis as my friends and family," she said.

Before the surgery Esther had no energy. Now she's number one in her class.

"After the operation, she became a new person. Now she is doing sports in school," Angelika said. "She is running. She is healthy. She is sometimes naughty – which I like – and she's a very good girl, very intelligent."

A Future Doctor

And Esther has big plans for the future.

"I want to become a cardiologist… I want to help my fellow Tanzanians," she told us.

That would be very good. With a population of nearly 50 million, Tanzania has only one heart hospital. Dr. Godwin Godfrey trained with SACH in Israel for five years.

"This training will be one of its kind for my country. So hopefully when I go back I will actually start the open heart surgery also for the young children," Godfrey told CBN News in 2011.

Now back in his own country, Godfrey is the nation's sole pediatric cardiovascular surgeon. He has 500 children on his waiting list.

"We still think that we need to grow more, to train more of our local people," Godfrey told us. "If we look at our local population, we need at least 20 centers that can perform open heart surgery for the children in this country."

And what would Esther tell other children who need surgery?

"They shouldn't be scared because you can't even hear anything. It's not painful," she said. "You just sleep as if you're in heaven. So they (should not) be scared."

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About The Author

Julie Stahl
Julie
Stahl

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN – first as a graduate student in Journalism, then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91, and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. As a correspondent for CBN News, Julie has covered Israel’s wars with Gaza, rocket attacks on Israeli communities, stories on the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and the