Czechs operated in eight different countries and brought one Afghan baby in need of heart surgery to Czechia within the Medevac medical-humanitarian programme in 2018, the Interior Ministry has written in its annual report.
Medical teams were active mainly in Jordan (11 missions) and Senegal, other countries received financial aid or medical personnel training.
In late 2018, Czech surgeons treated a four-month old boy from Afghanistan with a heart defect.
"In 2018, our priority was to send Czech doctors abroad," the ministry said on its website.
Altogether, 14 teams of doctors out of seven Czech hospitals went to provide aid abroad.
In autumn, reconstructive and plastic surgery specialists from Prague's Vinohrady hospital went to Jordan in order to help Syrian refugees and socially disadvantaged Jordanians.
Ophthalmologists from University Hospital Hradec Kralove, east Bohemia, and orthopedic surgeons from Prague's Military Hospital went to Amman.
The Czech Republic has been sending doctors to Jordan since 2013. Apart from the aforementioned specialists, the teams include traumatology specialists and child heart surgeons.
Two teams also went to Senegal, this time joined by specialist otorhinolaryngologists and gynaecologists.
A total of 896 surgeries were performed abroad thanks to the government-sponsored Medevac programme last year.
"Among other medical activities were the training of foreign medical personnel in their home countries or in the Czech Republic, the strengthening of medical infrastructure of Medevac partner countries and providing financial aid for the development of healthcare," the ministry wrote.
Financial gifts went, for example, to Iraq, Libya or Niger and the trainings were organised in Ukraine as well.
Medevac has been active in the Czech Republic since 1993 and in the beginnings mainly focused on transporting patients to the Czech Republic.
The first patient was a four-year-old girl wounded by a grenade explosion during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Between 1993 and 2013, Medevac brought 171 patients to the Czech Republic, mainly children.
Since 2013, the programme has been sending experts abroad.
Apart from Jordan, Czech doctors have helped in Cambodia, Kenya, Iraq, Morocco and Senegal.
Since 2015, the Czech Republic has also hosted specialist training of doctors from regions affected by a humanitarian crisis.
