The Preemptive Love Coalition is a non-profit that works to address the issue of the "Backlog" (as they refer to it) of children in Iraq suffering from congenital and genetic heart defects who are waiting for life-saving heart surgery. There is a severe lack of cardiac surgeons in Iraq, especially those trained to do surgery on children. PLC brings trained cardiac surgeons (who donate their time) to Iraq to not only do surgeries to start to eliminate the Backlog, but also to train Iraqi surgeons to do the same thing. To date, PLC has helped 72 children throughout Iraq, all in communities where their help has been sought out.
What I love about PLC is that it not only has such a strong mission, but it also has a plan. PLC spends 10-12 months with each family before the surgery, taking care of pre-op screenings, home visits, and meetings that help establish a relationship before the child ever enters the surgical suite. PLC then commits to a 6 month follow-through plan to make sure that the child recovers completely. But it gets better. PLC plans to graduate their Iraqi programs from international monetary support by 2015, and to have all Iraqi surgeons off international clinical support by 2020. This is a non-profit with a plan: equip the clinics, train the doctors, and leave the country better able to help the children.
