EVEN THE BLOOD AND SOIL CROWD MIGHT ACCEPT THAT HE'S AMERICAN:

Surgeon gave his own blood as heart boy lay dying on table (James Bone, 5/31/06, Times of London)

A TOP New York surgeon saved a poor Salvadorean boy by donating his own rare B-negative blood during a heart operation.

Dr Samuel Weinstein interrupted the operation to give a pint of his own blood when the local hospital ran out during a mercy mission in El Salvador for the charity Heart Care International. After eating a snack and drinking some water, he continued the surgery as the eight-year-old patient received a transfusion of his blood.

Dr Weinstein, 43, the chief of paediatric cardio-thoracic surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Centre in the Bronx, called the procedure “surreal”.

“It was 11pm and a team of 25 people were working furiously to save this boy,” he said. “We had to look under every rock.”

Francisco Fernandez, the son of subsistence farmers, survived the complex surgery and is now on the road to a full recovery. “The mother and I had a lot of hugs after the surgery and she kidded me and asked if he would grow up to be an American doctor,” Dr Weinstein said.