UCLA pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Jorge Lazareff will travel to Central America March 4–10 to bring international attention — one child at a time if necessary — to the toll taken by diseases of the central nervous system in developing nations.

The Institute of Medicine reported last year that neurological disorders accounted for 15 percent of the total disease burden in the world’s poorest nations, yet less than 1 percent of global health funding is dedicated to these often treatable maladies. The lion’s share of medical funding in developing nations goes to combat infectious disease.

Lazareff, who practices at the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA, hopes his trip to Antigua, Guatemala, will show local doctors and international policymakers how basic procedures can improve the lives of thousands of children with congenital brain and spinal cord defects. He also looks forward to making an immediate difference in a few young lives by taking on a number of surgical cases.

“Trips such as these play a major role in bringing attention to the needs of children with diseases of the central nervous system and the availability of treatment,” said Lazareff, who will be making his fifth foreign medical mission. Common conditions he addresses on these trips include spina bifida, hydrocephalus and brain tumors.

“I want to help the international health community better understand the economic and social cost of failing to address neurological health in developing nations,” Lazareff said. “I also want the local doctors to see that treatment is possible, even with limited resources; and I want to bring new hope to children I’m able to treat during my visit and to their parents.”

A native of Argentina, Lazareff received his medical degree from Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aries and completed his residency in the same city. Before joining UCLA in 1993, where he presently is director of the Pediatric Neurosurgery Program, Lazareff chaired the Department of Neurosurgery at Hospital Infantil De Mexico Dr. Federico Gomez.

Lazareff’s upcoming trip to Guatemala is sponsored by the California chapter of Healing the Children, a Spokane, Wash.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing medical care to needy children. Healing the Children chapters across the country not only bring children to the United States for treatment, but also recruit volunteer medical teams who travel to foreign nations at their own expense to treat patients and share their expertise with host-country health professionals.

“I discovered Healing the Children while surfing the Web and offered to provide them with information gathered on a recent mission to Romania — they responded by inviting me to travel to Guatemala,” said Lazareff, who will travel to Guatemala with Dr. Moise Danielpour, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “The need is so great. I could not turn them down,” Lazareff said.

Most trips last 8 to 10 days, and the medical teams treat as many as 100 children and screen scores more for possible treatment in the United States.

“The work is intense but rewarding,” said Lazareff, who helped bring a 4-month-old Romanian girl with spina bifida to UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital last year after Lazareff’s trip to Romania. “Ultimately, I hope these trips will build lasting lines of communication that lead to a better future for all children with brain and spinal problems.”

Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA offers a full spectrum of primary and specialized medical care for infants, children and adolescents. Its mission is to provide treatment for children in a compassionate atmosphere, as well as to conduct research that improves the understanding and treatment of pediatric diseases.

Online resources:

Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA


www.pediatrics.medsch.ucla.edu/

Healing the Children

www.healingchildren.org/welcome.html