Working with cardiologists at Lausanne University Hospital, we organise two surgical missions per year to Dakar. The purpose of these trips are to examine, treat and operate on sick children in their home country, while building the skills of local medical personnel. La Chaîne de l'Espoir, working in partnership with Tdh, recently built the Cuomo Centre for paediatric cardiac surgery at the Fann University Hospital in Dakar. This is a step towards ensuring patients can be treated locally, giving children with heart disease the opportunity to be operated on in their own country.