The up and coming Magdi Yacoub Heart Center under construction in 6th of October city received donations exceeding LE 360 million from numerous organization and celebrities during the third edition of the annual ceremony for Arab Hope Makers, an initiative dedicated to honoring people and institutions that pursue humanitarian goals.
The event, held on Thursday, was attended by a wide range of Arab and Egyptian celebrities, including TV presenters Mona El-Shazly and Amr Adib, who presented a number of the donors, along with comedic actor Ahmed Helmy, who donated LE one million.
The ceremony was also attended by the United Arab Emirates’ Vice President and Prime Minister and the ruler of the Emirate of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
He took part in honoring Yacoub in recognition of his astonishing 30-year career as a surgeon, during which he has performed over 50,000 operations and treated over two million patients.
Owner of the Dubai-based Damac Foundation Hussein Sajwani, who donated AED 3 million, gave an emotional speech on how he personally was impacted by Yacoub. The legendary surgeon was surprised during the event when Sajwani said that Yacoub had treated his mother in the UK 10 years ago, despite assumptions at the time by the hospital staff that there was no hope for recovery from the heart attack that she had suffered.
During the ceremony, Sajwani thanked Yacoub for saving his mother’s life, amid applause and cheers from the audience.
Furthermore, Representative of Sawiris foundation, Samih Sawiris, also took the stage to express his enthusiasm about the association’s ongoing collaboration with Yacoub in regards to the much-awaited new heart center in Cairo.
Meanwhile, Meshaal Kano, Chairperson of Kano Group, revealed during the ceremony that his business had donated AED 3 million to the center.
At the end of the ceremony, a screen displayed the total number of donations, which stood at LE 180 million.
Then, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced that he would double the displayed number to reach LE 360 million.
A few days before the massive ceremony, UAE-based businesses RTA Dubai and GEMS Education, along with KSA’s Al-Ansari Group for transportations and roads, announced that they would invest in the new Magdi Yacoub heart center, set to be located in 6 October beside Zewail City, in Egypt’s Cairo Governorate and just 40 km outside of Cairo.
Meanwhile, Arab Hope Makers allocated a quarter of the proceeds of its annual ceremony to the center, which is currently under construction, a few days before the ceremony’s kick-off.
Starting off with $US 160 million, construction work on the hospital was announced in January 2020 to begin in February, with the center expected to open in around two years.
The five-floor center is set to house five operating theaters, five rooms for cardiac catheterization procedures, and around 405 beds for patients.
The eagerly-awaited facility aims to perform 12,000 annual surgeries, including around 3,000 open heart surgeries. Additionally, the center has vowed to conduct 9,000 annual cardiac catheterization procedures, double the number of those performed in the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Aswan, which opened in 2008.
Officials at the center emphasized that heart surgeries performed on children will constitute 60 percent of the operations at the hospital.
It was previously announced that the new Cairo center would be able to a house five times more patients than the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation in Aswan, with thousands to be offered medical services there annually.
Furthermore, the center is expected to dedicate a portion of their efforts to conducting medical research and announced that its researchers will be equipped with the latest technologies in the field.
Official sources from the up and coming center have said that the decision to establish a new cardiac care facility in Cairo is part of efforts to lighten pressure on the heart center in Aswan, with the number of patients there having doubled in recent years.
Yacoub’s medical projects have contributed charitably in several regions, including Egypt’s Cairo and Aswan, Kigali in Rwanda, and Jamaica.
The famed Egyptian-British surgeon is also the founder and director of research at the Harefield Heart Science Center, and is currently a professor of Cardiothoracic surgery at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.
