Ivory Coast’s government has teamed up with Israeli-owned consultancy firm Mitrelli Group to fund and develop heart surgery healthcare in the West African nation, with a new $4.7 million initiative over the next five years. 

Half of the funding comes from the Ivory Coast government, while the other half is funded by nonprofit organisations, including two offshoots of the Mitrelli Group — the Menomadin Foundation, a philanthropic fund, and Promed, the firm’s health-care company — alongside Israeli NGO Save a Child’s Heart. 

A long term goal of the project is to move the Ivory Coast into becoming self-sufficient without outside assistance and to turn the country into Africa’s child heart surgery hub with effectively trained local doctors and surgeons.    

It has also been agreed that 30 Ivorian children will come to Israel for heart surgeries every year for the next five years. 

Eva Peled, Mitrelli’s partner in Ivory Coast and a leader on the project, told eJewishPhilanthropy that it could be potential source of medical tourism money for the Ivory Coast. 

Simon Fisher, executive director of Save a Child’s Heart, also told the publication that a joint venture between governments, private companies, and philanthropy “is a triangle that works.”  

The Mitrelli Group, which advises and manages national projects for governments, has been working in Ivory Coast since 2016. According to Pele, among the projects that the consulting firm was overseeing was a large-scale construction and renovation effort of hundreds of clinics in the West African coastal nation. 

French medical nonprofit group the Association Française du Coeur pour l’Afrique de l’Ouest (AFCOA) is also part of the project, led by Dr Mohamed Ly, a Mauritania-born French cardiac surgeon.  

The reasoning behind this is language, with the Ivory Coast being a largely French-speaking country. English is more often spoken by Israeli doctors, providing a barrier. 

In a statement, Ivory Coast’s health minister Pierre Dimba welcomed the initiative and said sending children abroad for surgery was not a long term solution. 

“Our vision is to stop outsourcing our healthcare, and instead begin to export our own capabilities to help others,” he said.  

 Shafi Musaddique is a news editor at Alliance magazine.