GOL - BEACON OF HOPE
Congenital heart disease is the number 1 birth defect worldwide. Each year, 1.3 million children are born with congenital heart disease. Sadly 93 % of them are born in a country that cannot provide them the necessary Lifesaving care. For over 4 decades, the Global Network of Gift of Life has been a beacon of hope for children with heart disease and their parents. In surveying the 76 Gift of Life programs around the world, more than 27,600 children from 78 countries have received care. The strategy is to develop sustainable pediatric cardiac centres of excellence and the empowerment of doctors and nurses to treat children in their own country or region of birth. Support from Rotary clubs and districts, and healthcare partners have created such centres in Uganda, El Salvador, Jamaica and Romania helping to ensure that reliable care will be provided to children in those areas. The reach has extended this year to provide hope to children in the Middle East.
The Rotary Club of Caledonia has supported the Gift of Life program in Rotary District 7090 which covers Western New York and Southern Ontario, of which I am the Chair. Through a matching grant from Rotary International, funding was given to a mission to the Hospital Infantil Dr. Robert Reid Cabral in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic where the list of children waiting for help is long. Treating children with heart disease is a very expensive undertaking and the mission was to provide a hundred free surgeries in the hospital with Surgeons, Cardiologists, Perfusionists, Respiratory Therapists, Anesthesiologists, and ICU nurses, volunteering from hospitals around the world under the direction of Dr. Rodrigo Soto and Randa Blenden, PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) of the International Children’s Heart Foundation. They all gave up their time to care for the children. The mission was to take place in four parts, each two weeks’ long in February, May, August and November, of this year. Three of them have been completed with a result of 79 surgeries and I was thrilled to be able to join in the mission this past month. The hospital donated the use of one Operating Theatre, and a 4 bed ICU was equipped in February. Two open heart surgeries were completed per day, and also checkups and catheterizations for diagnosis confirmation. The surgeons invited me to listen in on the assessments, review of echocardiograms and selection of the surgical cases. I watched surgical repairs in the OR and saw the children recovering in ICU, in fact the complete process in action. It was wonderful to see these children on a journey from not being able to play with their friends because of shortness of breath and other difficulties, to having their heart stopped medically for the repair, in ICU, and then blowing bubbles in the recovery ward to help their lung performance, and to going home within a week, a happy child, building energy. The parents, were thanking God, and everyone else that they could find in the hallways to thank. To be a minor part of this is inspirational, to have world class surgeons, who a day before I had watched his hands in the tiny heart of a child, thank me for providing the money to allow them to do their job, humbling and indescribable.
If you would like to be a part of this wonderful program Healing Little Hearts around the World, please talk to me, Valerie Bailey-Phillips. We always need people who care that others get the same advantages that we in our wonderful countries take for granted, regardless of gender, creed or national origin.