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Several connections - and coincidences - brought Edwardo Salas to Toledo Children's Hospital, where doctors successfully removed a noncancerous tumor that already made the 14-year-old Guatemalan boy blind in one eye.

His mother pleaded for help from Deena Ellis, who teaches medical Spanish at the University of Toledo. For the first time last year, Ms. Ellis went on a medical mission trip with SewHope Foundation, a Toledo nonprofit that does volunteer work in Guatemala's Petn region.

And Ms. Ellis had Edwardo's mother tell Dr. Anne Ruch, a Maumee obstetrician and gynecologist on the mission who earlier had operated on the boy's aunt, about the growing tumor the boy's family has known about for years. Dr. Ruch does not have the expertise to treat Edwardo, but she knows specialists who do - and is friends with a Healing the Children official who could help arrange his trip to Toledo.

"Just like any mom, she was very persistent," recalled Dr. Ruch, who has done medical missions for years but never brought any patients to the Toledo area for treatment.

"I knew people who had, so I knew it was possible," she said. "Everything kind of fell into place."

Dr. Anne Ruch helped arrange brain surgery for Edwardo Salas at Toledo Children's Hospital.

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Various local doctors, Toledo Children's Hospital, St. Vincent Mercy Children's Hospital, and the University of Toledo Medical Center, the former Medical College of Ohio, are among those long active in providing free health care to children from Third World countries. Such countries typically don’t have the medical expertise or equipment to treat the children, who often need surgery, much less Medicaid and other programs to pay for care, officials said.

Mercy Health Partners alone annually provides $500,000 worth of free medical services to children from other countries, with four to eight such cases coming to the hospital annually, said Dr. John Schaeufele, president and chief executive of St. Vincent Children’s.

“This is part of what our mission is, to reach out beyond the hospital walls and do what we can to help people,” he said.

Usually the foreign children treated at St. Vincent Children’s are those who can be cured and become productive adults in their home countries, which provides the most benefit, Dr. Schaeufele said. So far this year, St. Vincent Children’s has helped three patients, and several other children are being considered, he said.

One recent St. Vincent Children’s patient is a year-old boy from Burkina Faso in West Africa, Aboubacar Kafando, who received a heart-repairing cardiac catheterization last month from Dr. William Suarez, St. Vincent Children’s chief of pediatric cardiology.

Another is a 14-month-old boy with spina bifida, Ayoub Hamdi of Algeria ,who had remained untreated by surgery. He was operated on in March by surgeons from the former Medical College of Ohio, including a neurosurgeon, Dr. Azedine Medhkour, and two plastic surgeons, Drs. Marlene Welch and Timothy Janiga.

Ayoub had a large tumor on his back over a spinal cord opening that had not been surgically closed after birth, preventing him from lying on his back. Dr. Medhkour saw a YouTube video with Ayoub and his family after a friend alerted him to it, and he visited his native Algeria last summer to see the boy and other spina bifida patients.

“A kid with this kind of condition has a doomed future because they don’t have all the necessary means to treat them,” Dr. Medhkour said.

Edwardo, meanwhile, is Toledo Children’s first foreign charity case this year. Typically, three to seven such children are helped annually after local doctors see them on a medical mission, said Kevin Webb, Toledo Children’s interim president.

Dr. Ruch enlisted the help of Dr. Ahmad Zakeri, a Toledo Clinic neurosurgeon, to provide free care to the boy before contacting Mr. Webb. Dr. Zakeri and Dr. Brian Hoeflinger, a Toledo Clinic neurosurgeon, last month removed the brain tumor Edwardo likely was born with.

“I always tell Edwardo if it was my kid, it is exactly what I would have done,” said Dr. Zakeri, who has a 14-year-old son. “We got lucky because we could peel the tumor off his brain stem.”

A grateful Edwardo briefly broke down in tears recently during a party in his honor at Dr. Ruch’s house.

Edwardo remains blind in one eye, but the vision in his other eye is improving.

“He wishes he knew a little bit of English so he could express all the things he is feeling,” said Ruben Maltos, a MRI technician at Toledo Clinic who has helped interpret for the boy.

He added for Edwardo: “Thank you, everybody.”

Contact Julie M. McKinnon at:jmckinnon@theblade.comor 419-724-6087.

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