A tentative agreement has already been reached in talks with a 12-person surgical team representing an Israeli humanitarian project, "Save a Child's Heart."

The team is visiting the hospital in Hebei to perform operations and exchange knowledge with their Chinese colleagues.

Nine children aged between 10 months and 11 years suffering from heart disease have been successfully operated on by the team in the children's hospital since last week. The team plans to conduct another five or six paediatric heart operations this week.

The project was initiated by Amram Cohen in 1995. It is the largest undertaking in the world to provide urgently needed heart surgery and follow-up care for children from developing countries.

The project provides services such as surgical operations and medicines to children with heart defects free of charge regardless of race, color, religion or financial situation, according to Cohen.

His surgical team has operated on 350 children with a success rate of 96 per cent from 1995 to the end of August 1999.

The project has also allowed for the establishment of some exchange activities between China and Israel.

Several members of "Save a Child's Heart" travelled in March 1998 to China's Gansu Province, where they performed a number of operations. Following this visit, four nurses from Gansu went to Israel in October 1998 for one year of training.

Upon the request of Gansu's health department, the same surgical team returned to work for three weeks in March 1999.

In 1999, the Israeli surgical team also visited Hebei Province, where they successfully conducted nine operations at the children's hospital.

Ren said that the operations performed by the Israeli team in the Hebei Children's Hospital were more than usually complicated.

"It was a good opportunity for the medical staff of both sides to learn from each other," Ren said.

(China Daily)