International Children's Heart Foundation

Where Hope Comes to Life

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Trip Recap: Babyheart team makes second trip to Santiago, Dominican Republic, in 2015

Wow! What an incredible week our Babyheart team had in Santiago, Dominican Republic, May 23 through 30! Eight children received life-saving operations. Our youngest patient was 4 days old and was born with a very complex diagnosis of tricuspid atresia and pulmonary atresia. Our team performed a palliative surgery to insert a modified Blalock Taussig Shunt that will allow him to grow until he can have a Glenn procedure.

Local team makes great strides in caring for complex patients

The Babyheart team operated on several small patients, the smallest weighing only 2.5 Santiago, DR Local Teamkilograms (5.5 pounds)! Our oldest patient was 6 years old, and only two of the patients weighed more than 6 kilograms (12 pounds). The ability of the local team to care for these small and complex patients after surgery is proof of the growth and development of the ICHF program over the last several years. Roodney, one of the two Haitian children to receive surgery on this trip, and Jowell still remained in the ICU when the Babyheart team left, but the local team in Santiago took wonderful care of them.

Doctors and volunteers from around the world join forces to save lives

The ICHF team also was excited to have Dr. Hernan Montero, pediatric cardiac surgeon from Guayaquil, Ecuador, with us on our trip to Santiago. Dr. Montero is the leader of the team at the Icaza Bustamante children’s hospital, where ICHF is working to build a sustainable program. Not only was it a great opportunity for Dr. Montero to see additional cases and experience a medical mission in a different country, he was also an asset to the ICHF team by taking the lead on some key cases. It was great to see him and our other surgeon, Dr. Isaac Heredia from Santiago, working together in the OR with supervision from Dr. Soto.

ICHF is also grateful to all of our Santiago Teamdedicated volunteers who worked tirelessly throughout the week caring for patients and performing ongoing teaching for the staff. We were again an international team made up of volunteers from Denmark, London, Chile, Honduras, Ecuador and the United States.

The Babyheart team has 10 more trips planned for 2015. As we look ahead to those trips, we ask our dedicated supporters to consider continued giving. It’s easy. Visit our giving page to learn more about various levels and to donate now. Children and families will be forever changed because of your generosity!

Babyheart Mission Macedonia

A photographer’s first voyage on ICHF’s first Babyheart medical mission to Skopje, Macedonia

Humanitarian missions are a labor of love, with equal parts of each. They’re also full of hows… How are things going to go, how will the kids do, how is the culture different to what I’m used to? There’s an excitement to not knowing any of these things and a similar excitement as the answer to each question is found through experience.

There are always two aspects to any mission. The external aspects that generate the questions above and the internal aspect of team and patient where there are no questions at all. I KNOW the team is here to fight for the patient, I KNOW the skills of each individual is beyond question, I KNOW the mother and family of each child we see loves their kid with the utmost intensity. I KNOW what’s at stake.

Macedonia, from my perspective, was a beautiful experience. After a grueling flight from Denver I was rewarded by a pretty morning and short drive from the airport to the hotel where the team was staying. No matter where I go, the drive from the airport to the city always sets my impression of a place and this drive was no exception. We passed small parcels of land that had obviously been farmed for a long time, new housing developments and older homes long abandoned. I saw old men fishing in what looked like drainage canals and groups of kids playing basketball at a graffiti covered rec area. I saw in abundance what I call “the sameness” of everywhere I’ve ever been, people going about their day, working hard to support their families. The thing that was different here, was the destruction. There are places you had to look for it but there are small reminders in Skopje of the devastating earthquake in 1963 that set this country back so far. The best example is the train station in Downtown Skopje that was left as it stood the day of the quake, stopped clock and all.

My job as photographer is twofold, to document what the team is doing to show both the world and you as a donor the good works you make possible and to give the kids and their families a voice. It’s a visual voice but that’s enough to start a dialog between them and the viewer. I feel this is the most important aspect of my job, to make that connection between two people who will probably never meet, between two people, one in desperate need for help and one who CAN help. Here in Macedonia there were no shortage of children in need of lifesaving help and fortunately a team here who could provide that help, the Babyheart medical mission team.

 

 

On my first day I was introduced to a woman and her son who’s story was tragic. I wish I could post photos of her son but at her request I won’t. She had had 6 miscarriages and her little boy with the sick heart is her last chance at having a child in her life. Even though her son was scared at being poked and prodded and apprehensive about the army of strangers around him, you could tell he was all boy inside. You could also tell the bond he had with his mother was deep and unshakable. Although I can’t go into too much detail about his case, I can tell you his story had a happy ending…

There were 11 cases done on this mission. I’m unique as far as the team goes because I can’t compartmentalize. Each medical team member has a specific role to play, surgeon, scrub, cardiologist, SICU… I am a participant in my own way for the entire case. I’m there in the beginning for the screening, I’m in the OR for the procedure, I wait with the family for their child to come up from surgery, I’m there in the SICU post op when a family member gets to come in and see their baby for the first time and hopefully I get to come back at some point and see a happy healthy kid playing at his home. This breadth of experience gives me a unique position to be able to comment on the miracles that the ICHF team does with your support. Every volunteer and donor should be proud of the lives they touch because saving innocent children is the highest calling a person can answer.

The stories of each of the families on this mission was different and compelling. As the photographer, I have the privilege (sometimes curse) of really getting to know the families. I share their joy when cases go well and their grief when there’s nothing that can be done. I hope through my pictures from this trip, you’re able to share some of that too.

 

 

 

 

Kevin Whitcomb

Babyheart photographer and guest blogger

 www.eyesofman.org

To Own Your Victories is to Own Your Future

“When I was a girl, the oath we took said – in part – ‘May fire rain down on America’. I didn’t want to say it. I’d lived in America and had friends there. I was nine, so the teachers let it slide. They didn’t believe it either. Had I been in high school I would have been punished.” Madia, an anesthesiologist resident told me. She continued to talk about the revolution, her eyes coming alive, “It was the best time of our lives! There was such solidarity. We all came together.”

Now the US – along with France, Turkey, Qatar, and the UK – are considered friends of the revolution. The flags of the countries can be seen in the graffiti that covers nearly every vertical surface in the city. A careful student of 21st century American foreign policy might note that this in not always the case with the nations we try the ‘help’.

A hated tyrant was ousted, without invasion or intrusive nation building, and a loose group of put-upon citizens were able to take their country back. Libyans are grateful for the help, as well as, in the end, being allowed to drive their own revolution. And why not? People and societies must own their victories, or they aren’t really victories.

To that end, taking care of your own children is written into the operational model of the ICHF.  Certainly the care for the children is a part of the mission, but the true endgame is creating a sustainable model for a pediatric cardiac unit that works: Writing protocols and technical training to international standards as well as working within the cultural framework of the host country. It is crucial distinction that separates the ICHF mission from the medical safaris. They no doubt to good work and save lives, but when they head back to their comfortable lives, no much more gets done. When ICHF volunteers head back to their comfortable lives, they know that they have left not only a mark, but that mark is part of building a sustainable solution.

The importance of this cannot be overstated – people must own their victories to get anything out of them: the systems must make sense the to the doctors and nurses and all the others who use them. They must take pride in it for it to work. Without pride and a sense of ownership of the many volunteers and supporters of the International Children’s Heart Foundation, it wouldn’t work either.

Richard Murff

Benghazi, Libya

Mission Statement

The mission of the International Children’s Heart Foundation (ICHF) is to bring the skills, technology and knowledge to cure and care for children with congenital heart disease in developing nations.  ICHF does this regardless of country of origin, race, religion or gender. Our goal is to make the need for ICHF obsolete. We work toward this goal through our medical mission trips, where we operate on children and educate local healthcare professionals.

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