Twenty years ago children with heart disease died without any help as if this was God?s will. Prior to 1980 most of the children with congenital heart disease, especially those with the most serious problems, died without getting any substantial help as this was not possible. However, in 1980, children?s congenital heart disease began to be dealt with on a somewhat more organized basis. For the first time, the first cases of newly- born babies and infants were operated on, abroad.
This happened after the insistence of the Association and the pedocardiologist Dr Panayiotis Zarvos who treated the children, and who made sure that with the help of the Ministry of Health the children were sent to the United Kingdom for complex heart surgery.