Save a Child's Heart is the creation of Dr. Amram Cohen, and grew out of Cohen's experiences as a doctor serving with the U.S. Armed Forces in Korea in 1988, where he joined a program that helped poor local children with heart disease. The experience introduced him to a network of doctors doing similar work in developing countries, inspiring him to start his own program after moving to Israel in 1992. He brought three Ethiopian children to Israel for heart surgery in 1996, and then went on to make use of a network of professional and personal contacts to build a volunteer organization to help others for whom the operations were unavailable or too expensive.