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Indianapolis doctors return from life-saving trip

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – A group of Indianapolis doctors are on a mission to save lives not just in central Indiana but abroad.

Five doctors recently returned from a trip to Jordan. They spent their Thanksgiving holiday operating on children with congenital heart defects.

“Those children in particular don’t have access to facilities and the facilities they do have access to are not really capable because of a poor infrastructure,” said Dr. Mark Turrentine, who is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.

This trip was the 25th time they had gone to Jordan.

“To take a child of theirs and be able to fix their heart is, I think, a real privilege for us and we’re honored to be able to do that,” Dr. Turrentine added.

The doctors operated for four days and have another trip planned for February,March of next year.

“Without their help, actually, these kids will die. A lot of people from Indiana donating to help these kids, also without any connection, they don’t see the kids even except through the pictures so this is what it means to be a human, helping another human,” said Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health intensive care specialist Dr. Samer Abu-Sultaneh.

Dr. Abu-Sultaneh was born and raised in Jordan, he said it is important he’s able to go back to his home country and help those in need.

“I left my country to come here in 2006 so I didn’t practice medicine for a long time. I practiced for about two years there. It’s different. We have a lot of resources here, a lot of help from nurses. We depend a lot on a lot of people with us. There you just do it by yourself. You try to teach them so it’s a little bit different. It means a lot to me when I go over there and treat these people because they are the same culture, they speak the same language,” said  Dr. Samer Abu-Sultaneh.

The trips are made possible through grant money plus private donations.

“We’ve established relationships with Rotary International and Gift of Life and we’ve also established relationships with Chain of Hope out of London. That combination along with other private family foundations have afforded us the ability to go more times during the year,” said Dr. Turrentine.

One of the doctors kept a blog while on the trip. That can be found here

Donation information can be found here.