Cardiologist Victor Gil, coordinator of the Cardiovascular Risk and Thrombosis Center at Hospital da Luz Torres de Lisboa, led the “Colors to Save Hearts” mission to Mozambique, an initiative of the World Heart Federation that aims to the eradication of rheumatic fever, responsible for many heart diseases in less developed countries. For two weeks, a group of 11 Portuguese volunteers, all cardiologists, and pediatric cardiologists, provided field training to health professionals in Mozambique, to enable them to identify heart diseases in the population of that country, through clinical means and echocardiography. This mission was just the first stage of a work that is being developed between Portuguese and Mozambican cardiologists and which results from a protocol – 'Heart in Mozambique' – established between the Portuguese Society of Cardiology, of which Victor Gil is honorary president, and the University of Maputo, on the initiative of the World Heart Federation. The 'Heart with Mozambique' program has the support of entities such as the Secretariat of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, the Camões Institute and Apifarma, also counting on the high patronage of the President of the Republic. According to Victor Gil, “the large private health groups and medical equipment companies were also challenged to collaborate on this project, given the enormous shortage of local technical resources”. After returning from the ‘Heart in Mozambique’ mission, the group of volunteers was received by Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa in Belém. “During the audience, the PR had the opportunity to listen to the team's experiences and congratulate them on the work done as doctors, but also as ambassadors of Portugal, challenging them to give continuity and dimension to the project”, reads on the Presidency's website. Regarding this project, Victor Gil also wrote, in the Observador newspaper: “In a troubled time, with exhausted systems and exhausted teams, (...) there is still, after all, a solidarity space for those who are even worse off than us, a fraternity space lived and not just said, a space that is motivating the new generations of cardiologists, making us reborn the hope of better days, for showing us that there is a bigger heart”.
