RGOL USA, was founded in the late eighties, initially as a volunteer auxiliary to the Rotary Gift of Life program organized in 1975 to provide life-saving heart surgery to children from developing countries. Volunteers provided non-clinical support including transportation, translation, housing as well as emotional and spiritual support to children brought to America for life-saving heart surgery from Russia. The program remained at a grassroots level until philanthropist Kurt Weishaupt started funding heart surgeries – especially for children from Russia.

 

In 1991, RGOL USA incorporated as a separate nonprofit entity. Over the years, and because of the support of donors and the generous posthumous bequest of Andre Guevorguian and his mother Tatiana, its mission evolved and expanded to partnering with volunteer medical teams to provide free pediatric cardiac surgeries, training and medical resources to develop regional pediatric cardiac centers. These medical missions have enabled the centers to perform increasingly complex surgeries locally.

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Our medical equipment program sources and provides specialized pediatric cardiac medical devices, instruments, and equipment, such as special surgical eyeglasses, portable echocardiograms, pediatric replacement heart valves, and other life-saving devices for children. To this day, doctors from the Bakulev Center in Moscow travel to assess children in rural regions thanks to a portable echocardiogram, among other equipment, purchased by RGOL USA.

 

To date, RGOL USA has saved the lives of more than several thousand children and supported the training of more than 50 local medical team members.

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