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Abu Dhabi Gives U.S. Hospital $150 Million

The government of Abu Dhabi is giving $150 million to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, with the aim of developing tools and processes to reduce the pain children experience before, during and after surgery.

“Our hope is that this gift will be transformative and lead to new medical technology and breakthroughs that improve health care for children around the world,” said Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States. Abu Dhabi is the capital of the U.A.E.

The gift is one of several the country has made in the United States, including one in 2007 for a similar amount to support construction of a cardiac and critical-care facility at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The U.A.E. often do not provide a dollar figure for their major contributions.

But between gifts to United States institutions and underwriting the costs of the expansion of their outposts in their backyard, the emirates have provided well over $500 million in support to American nonprofits.

“What’s interesting about this gift is that it is not going to a building, bricks and mortar,” Mr. Al Otaiba said. “The majority of this gift is for medical research that will lead to breakthroughs in medical technology and treatment.”

The hospital will establish the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation. Besides seeking ways to ease the pain of the surgical experience, it will try to harness a child’s immune system to diminish the need for surgery; to use bioengineering to increase the precision of surgery; and to use genetic analysis to tailor treatment for children.

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The gift to the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington will be used for pain research.Credit...Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

“If a child comes to us for surgery 5 or 10 years from now, we want to be able to deliver it in a pain-free way, and we want to share what we learn and develop so that there’s a global impact on kids out of this gift,” said Edwin K. Zechman Jr., chief executive of Children’s National.

The institute’s goals were hatched in the home of Joseph E. Robert Jr., who made a fortune selling the real estate held by failed savings and loans in the early 1990s.

Mr. Robert’s son had undergone more than nine hours of surgery at Children’s National several years before that. His son has since become a Marine, and Mr. Robert donated $25 million to the hospital for a surgical center.

A few years after that, he was sitting around his dining room table with some hospital executives, discussing how to make surgery less frightening and painful for its patients and their parents.

Last fall, armed with the business plan that came out of that initial discussion, Mr. Robert visited Abu Dhabi. He had become friendly with the ruling family and with the crown prince, Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

“We were eating dinner off of TV trays, in front of a bank of televisions, watching the news, and I just started talking about the evolution of the plan and how important a concept I thought it was, and he was immediately interested,” Mr. Robert said.

He is now fighting a glioblastoma, the same form of cancer that recently killed Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

“I was determined to get this done before the good Lord decided my work here is done,” Mr. Robert said. “I mean, how often is it in your life that you come up with a $150 million pipe dream at your dining room table and actually get to see it come to life?”

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