Without doubt, one of Loma Linda University’s most spectacular international efforts has been the activities of its Overseas Heart Surgery Team. Founded in 1963 by Ellsworth E. Wareham, MD (Class of 1942) and C. Joan Coggin, MD (Class of 1953-A), the Team has performed more heart surgeries in more countries than has any similar organization on record.
Starting on April 29, 1963, the Loma Linda team flew to Karachi, Pakistan to perform life-saving heart surgery. During the following month the team evaluated 300 patients in Pakistan and performed 44 surgeries. The United States Department of State soon realized that they had done a “good thing” in allowing the contact to be made.
How did that happen?
In Pakistan, Afshan Zafar, an olive-skinned girl with brown eyes, had been born a “blue baby.” She was an invalid, unable to play with other children. Because her physicians had told her parents that they regretfully could not help her, Mr. and Mrs. Zafar resigned themselves to the fact that their daughter’s tiny heart would someday fail.
Then one day in June 1961, Afshan’s father read a story in Signs of the Times regarding Loma Linda University’s White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. Promptly he wrote to the magazine’s editor, Arthur S. Maxwell, seeking “advice, guidance, and help” for his “lovely doll.” The article had briefly mentioned the White’s newly established open-heart-surgery program. Maxwell wrote back advising Mr. Zafar to take his daughter to the Seventh-day Adventist hospital in Karachi. Then he sent copies of all correspondence to the White Memorial Hospital.
Two specialists took up the cause—Morton M. Woolley, MD (Class of 1951), Associate Professor of Surgery and a specialist in children’s surgery and Earle D. Case, Assistant Administrator. They wrote Mr. Zafar saying that the White Memorial Hospital had facilities for both diagnostic work and surgery.
Following Arthur Maxwell’s advice, Mr. Zafar took Afshan to Karachi and met Roscoe I. McFadden, MD (Class of 1940), medical director of the Adventist hospital there. Following a physical examination and a series of diagnostic tests, McFadden confirmed that the little girl did indeed need heart surgery. That option, available only in Great Britain or the United States, seemed financially impossible to the Pakistani factory worker. The two men sat in silence.
“Perhaps,” Dr. McFadden speculated, “just perhaps, the physicians at the University I attended would be willing to do the work without charge.”
A determined Mr. Zafar launched a one-man campaign to save his invalid daughter. He wrote letters to airlines, the United States Embassy, the editor of Signs of the Times, and to the administrator of the White Memorial Hospital. Dr. Woolley and his colleagues readily agreed to cover the cost of the surgery and to provide whatever services might be needed. Transportation, however, remained a problem.
In a letter, John Parrish, Loma Linda University Public Information Officer, suggested that Mr. Zafar again contact the United States Embassy in Karachi. He proposed that the man present all correspondence and specifically request that the Embassy arrange for transportation for Afshan and one parent to and from the United States. As a result, the office of Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the United States Military Air Transport Service to fly the Pakistani father and daughter to California.
It took more than a year of negotiations. Then, on October 1, 1962, Drs. Woolley and Ellsworth E. Wareham performed a five-hour heart surgery on Afshan Zafar. During the little girl’s intensive postoperative care, Afshan began to change dramatically. Her pale blue skin pinked up. Her breathing stabilized. Her overjoyed Muslim father wrote home, “Allah has saved our little Afshan. He has used the American doctors to bring new life to our precious daughter.”
By the time Afshan and her father returned to Pakistan, the word had spread, and parents of other children with congenital heart defects flooded the United States Embassy and the Adventist hospital in Karachi with requests for similar assistance.
What to do? Logistics and financial realities for sending all the potential patients and their parents to America seemed prohibitive. Nonetheless, the creative minds at the Embassy and the hospital came up with a plan. Arthur W. Weaver, MD (Class of 1953), chief surgeon at the Karachi Seventh-day Adventist hospital, decided to contact the heart team at Loma Linda University and inquire whether they would be willing to come to Karachi. In a letter to Dr. Wareham Weaver asked, “If the government could pay your way, would you come?”
Wareham discussed the idea with his colleague, Dr. C. Joan Coggin, a cardiologist. The two agreed that if transportation for a six-person medical team and a ton of equipment necessary for open-heart surgery could be arranged, they would spend their vacations helping the people of Asia.
Correspondence literally flew between California and Pakistan. In addition to the bulky load of supplies, Loma Linda University’s only heart-lung machine would have to go to Karachi. The Department of State’s Agency for International Development (USAID), with additional help from Vice-President Johnson, landed the heart team in Karachi on May 2, 1963. The Loma Linda University Overseas Heart Surgery Team had been born.