UAE launches initiative to treat poor cardiac patients

A team of Emirati, Egyptian and French cardiologists have come up with a creative initiative to charge rich cardiac patients for heart surgeries and donate the funds to treat poor patients. Supported by UAE entrepreneurs, the first-of-its-kind humanitarian social and medical mission, a brainchild of a UAE cardiologist, Dr Adel Al Shameri, CEO of International Doctors of Poor People Initiative, aims to pay fees of diagnostic, therapeutic invasive cardiac procedures for the underprivileged heart patients across the world. Dr Abdullah Shehab, a UAE heart consultant and member of the team, said he joined the initiative because it provides an ideal opportunity to serve destitute patients. The project, he said, is creative in terms of programme and self-financing and had achieved significant success at the first trial of operation. The pilot programme of surgeries, he added, had already been running in three countries: UAE, Egypt and Sudan. Well-off cardiac patients are charged for surgeries, according to the fee structure applied in private and public hospitals, to cover the exorbitant costs of treatment of poor patients and low-income people, who are not covered by the insurance system