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  • Gift of Life was started in 1975 when a Long Island Rotary group brought a 4 years old girl here from Uganda for heart surgery.

  • The District 7190 Gift of Life chapter was started in 1984 — since then our local group has provided life saving surgery for more than 200 children from other countries.

  • About 125 of these patients were cared for in their home country, the Dominican Republic, over the course of 7 years when a group from Albany Medical Center (funded by the Gift of Life) travelled to Santiago, DR for a week at a time to provide medical care as well as teaching.

  • Currently there are Gift of Life programs in over 60 countries.

  • 50 Hospitals in the US and 20 more abroad provide care for these patients. Albany Medical Center is proud to be one of those hospitals.

  • Recently the 10,000th Gift of Life child was operated on. She was also from Uganda and the original Gift of Life patient, Grace Agwaru, accompanied her. Grace is now in her 40's and works for the Ugandan government as an agricultural engineer.

Gift of Life works to save the lives of children with congenital heart defects worldwide.

Since 1984, District 7190 Gift of Life has provided care for more than 200 children from other countries. We work with Gift of Life International and Rotary District 7190 in eastern Upstate New York.

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