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By Libya Herald reporters.
Tunis, 22 October 2017:
More Libyan kids will receive life-saving heart surgery thanks to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) decision to fund a volunteer team of US cardiologists that has been working in the east of the country since 2012 for the cost of its travel and accommodation.
Bill Novick and his medical team had managed to make only one of their planned seven Libyan trips this year because the Beida health ministry could find no further funding and the Presidency Council’s (PC) ministry of health was not prepared to release funds.
Last month Novick attacked the Government of National Accord (GNA) saying that it did not care about the fate of Libyan children who were dying needlessly of heart conditions.
The WHO is understood to be giving direct funding of $130,000 for a further trip by Novick’s team and is expected to have completed the legal formalities around its Letter of Agreement within the next two weeks.
Beida government health minister, Reida El Oakley had told the WHO that there were some thousand Libyan children awaiting heart operations, each of which would cost at least LD 30,000 in a private hospital in Tripoli.
Oakley told the Libya Herald in July that Novick and his surgical team of 17 had saved Libya a great deal of money. “In their latest visit they did 40 operations at a cost of $100,000, which covered travel, supplies and food and accommodation. The price of just one of those operations would normally have been around $70,000”.
It is understood that the WHO had originally been asked to fund a far larger programme of surgery for up to $1.3 million. Last week Oakley contacted UNSMIL chief Ghassan Salamé pressing him to back a more extensive series of visits by Novick’s team over the next two years.
