Dr Victor Chang

Victor Chang was one of Australia's best heart surgeons. Thousands of Australians have Dr. Chang and his team to thank for being alive today. Without Dr. Chang's skill and determination they wouldn't have new hearts to replace their diseased ones. Victor Chang's specialty is in giving people new hearts, or heart transplants. When people need a heart transplant they have to wait for an organ donor; someone who gives up their heart when they die.
"I always get upset when I do this because it means someone has to die so that someone else can live..."

Victor Peter Chang Yam Him was born in China in 1936, and came to Australia when he was fifteen years old.
His mother died of cancer when he was just twelve years old. It was then he decided to become a doctor.

Early in his career, Victor Chang was inspired by Dr. Mark Shanahan, who was one of only three heart surgeons in Australia at the time.

"I gave this talk to the residents one evening in October 1963 and at the end Dr. Chang came along and introduced himself to me and he was a Junior Resident at the hospital at that time, his first year as a doctor, and he was an unusual looking fellow. He had this little fresh face and quite big ears, and he said to me, 'I'd really like to do what you've done'." (Dr. Mark Shanahan)

Victor Chang began training in heart surgery, and he became one of Australia's best.

"He was able to do things with his hands that ensured that no mistakes would be made, but the most important thing was the wonderful confidence that he had in himself." (Shanahan)

Dr. Chang worked at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. It was there that he set up the first centre in Australia especially for heart transplants.

He came into the public eye in 1984. A young girl named Fiona Coote needed a new heart.

Heart transplants weren't a new idea, but Victor Chang wanted to improve the operations and make them more successful.

" The survival rate is about 91%."

While he was at St. Vincent's, Victor Chang operated on many hundreds of people. They all remember him for his optimism.

"Dr. Chang never said a negative thing to any patient. When they saw him he was bright, he was breezy, he was bouncy, he had a smile on his face and if they said to him, you know, 'What complications are there, what might go wrong?' he'd say 'Oh don't you worry about that let me worry about that.' " (Shanahan)

Dr. Chang became concerned about a shortage of organ donors. So he set about designing an artificial heart.

He loved making technical things and worked long hours to improve his invention.

The artificial heart was almost finished when Dr. Chang was killed in 1991.

Some people wanted Victor Chang to give them $3 million. When he didn't give in, they panicked and shot him.

But work on Dr. Chang's artificial heart didn't stop. A new research centre was set up in his memory.

It's taking research into heart disease further than probably even Dr. Chang would have imagined.

"He used to always say that whatever you give, if you give it freely and without conditions it'll come back to you two fold." (Shanahan)