ABOUT DR VICTOR CHANG

 In Australia, Dr Victor Chang was probably best known for his pioneering work on the heart transplant team at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. The publicity generated from the first really successful transplant on Fiona Coote in 1984 was significant. He also lobbied the Australian government and politicians to grant $1 million to St Vincent’s to establish a heart transplant unit and was successful in achieving this.

Witnessing the slow and painful death of his mother, suffering from breast cancer when she was only 33 years old, was the most significant event of Victor Chang’s young life and the primary influence upon his decision to study medicine.

In 1951, at the age of fifteen, to avoid the political turmoil in Hong Kong at the time, his father placed him on a steamship headed to the unfamiliar shores of Australia. He arrived three weeks later, speaking no English and was enrolled via a relative at Christian Brothers High School, Lewisham. He graduated from Sydney University in 1962 with a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery. In 1984, ten years after assisting in a heart transplant at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, Victor led a team to perform what is regarded as Australia’s first successful heart transplant.

Throughout his life he maintained a deep connection with Asia, and particularly his country of birth, China. For many years he took it upon himself to fund trips taking teams of doctors, surgeons and nurses to Asian nations to train and teach counterparts in cutting-edge cardiovascular surgical techniques and to give them the opportunity to be at the forefront of cardiovascular management. Doctors from Asia were also brought to Australia to live, study and learn in order to return to their own countries with these skills.

Additionally, as a surgeon, Victor Chang strived to be innovative in his profession and continually improve upon techniques used in cardiovascular surgery and the management of heart disease. He invented an artificial heart valve to replace dysfunctional ventricle heart valves in people with chronic heart disease and was in the process of finalising the CHAD artificial heart device before he died. The Foundation’s grant making also covers this area.

In 1986 Victor Chang was awarded an Order of Australia primarily in recognition of service to international relations between Australia and China, and to medical science.

Read a short history of Dr Chang’s life here.