press releases 2008

U.S. Ambassador Richard Graber, Afghani Ambassador Mohammad Kacem Fazelly, Interior Minister Ivan Langer and representatives of Prague university hospital will visit The Oliva Children’s Medical Institution in Ricany near Prague on Monday, June 2. They will meet six Afghani children, recuperating mainly after surgeries of inborn heart deficiency.  The little patients were brought to the Czech Republic this April under the auspices of the Czech humanitarian program MEDEVAC.

The MEDEVAC humanitarian program, administered by the Czech Interior Ministry with the cooperation of the defense and health care ministries, is primarily intended for seriously ill children from war-torn and other needy regions, who would not be efficiently treated in their homeland.  The Czech government allocated CZK 5 million this year for the program.  Within the MEDEVAC program between 1993 and 2008, 120 patients (mostly children) were treated in the Czech Republic; coming from war zones and regions recovering from natural disasters like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.