Three-Year-Old Saved by Heart Transplant After Months on Artificial Heart

Rafael Adri, 3.5, spent nine months inside Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva after being born in Jerusalem with a severe heart defect. He survived on a Berlin Heart, a German-made portable artificial heart he called simply “Berlin,” and knew he was waiting for a real heart. His mother, Hodaya, said he kept asking, “When will the heart come?” and the family had even prepared to fly to New York for a faster transplant.

The breakthrough came just two hours before the scheduled flight, when doctors told the family that a matching heart had been found in Israel. The donor was Shabaa, a 6.5-year-old girl from Kafr Qasem who collapsed during a family trip to Eilat. After a CT scan at Yoseftal Hospital in Eilat showed massive brain bleeding, she was flown to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where doctors determined that an abnormal vein in her brain had burst. She died two days later, and her father, Mahran Badir, agreed immediately to donate her organs, saying, “We are messengers.”

In Schneider, the transplant team moved quickly. Dr. Gabi Amir said a heart can remain outside the body for no more than six hours, so everything had to be timed “to the minute.” After midnight, Shabaa’s heart left Soroka in a cooler, and Rafael was placed on a heart-lung machine while the Berlin Heart was disconnected. Dr. Amir said the match was excellent, comparing it to “winning the lottery.”

The operation was emotionally charged for Dr. Amichai Rothstein, who had followed Rafael for years while carrying his own fresh grief. Rothstein’s son was killed in combat in Khan Yunis on June 6, 2025. At 3 a.m. he told Hodaya the transplant was working and that “a new path” was beginning. Rafael recovered quickly, called himself a superhero, and soon left the ward. He later visited the Biblical Zoo, fulfilled his wish to see a giraffe, and fed it a carrot.