HEARTBEAT INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION INC

Heartbeat International is proud of the history and lineage whereby one person's compassion for his fellow countryman ignited a chain of events that is now taking the form of a global movement. Federico Alfaro, MD, a Guatemalan physician, was treating a seventeen-year-old patient. The boy had a heart condition cardiologists refer to as “heart block”, an affliction in which the heartbeat continually slows until one day the heart just stops pumping. The boy's condition was curable. The problem was he was poor. Dr. Alfaro tried desperately to find financial assistance to provide the boy with the pacemaker he needed. But in the end he had to watch the boy die. He swore another countryman would not die because they could not afford a pacemaker. And so our mission was born. "To save lives globally by providing cardiovascular implantable devices and treatment to the needy people of the world."