Rotary “Gift of Life” helps young heart patients
They come so often and so regularly that we are in danger of taking then for granted. But trust me, the scores of Belizean children who have been treated by these visiting doctors and nurses will not soon forget their important intervention.
Kendra Griffith, Reporting
“Today, children of all shapes and sizes gathered with their parents in the corridors of the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital as Rotary held its Gift of Life Cardiac Clinic.”
Maria Aragon
“I brought my son Peter Aragon for a check-up to the heart doctor.”
Vicente Flores, Brought Son in for Diagnosis
“He has been sick for the past three months and we have been taking him to Chetumal and he have been diagnosed with a heart problem, so I get in touch with Miss Yvette and she told me to bring him today to see the specialists who that will be coming from abroad.”
Heidi Hess is one of five visiting medics. The Paediatric Cardiac Nurse Practitioner has been flying from Tampa, Florida to Belize for the last five years to assist in the clinics.
Heidi Hess, Visiting Paediatric Cardiac Nurse Practitioner
“We do echocardiograms probably on about thirty-five to forty children and usually each year we find about five or ten new children that need to have heart surgery. Many of the children that we are examining are children that had surgery in the past and we’re doing checkups.
Four months ago, two year old Alma was at a Mayo Clinic in the U.S. having surgery.
Heidi Hess
“One of the blood vessels in her heart was narrow and she had a hole in her heart.”
Today her mother travelled all the way from Chunox Village in the beleaguered Corozal District, to bring her in for a check-up. So far her prognosis is good.
Stephanie Pott, Daughter Had Heart Surgery
“She’s eating good and playing good right now.”
Kendra Griffith
“So you must be very happy.”
Stephanie Pott
“Yeah.” [Smiles]
Heidi hess
“Okay, I think it would be good for you to come back in February, in six months for another checkup.”
The clinics are conducted twice a year as part of Rotary’s Gift of Life Programme. Approximately sixty children are seen at each session.
Yvette Burks, Coordinator, Rotary Gift of Life
“They tell us who needs surgery, how soon they need surgery, and they literally prioritise the list for us. They tell us this child needs to go within three months, within six months or whatever the case may be. … We pay for the patient’s plane ticket as necessary. We interview patients and families individually but depending on how much assistance they need financially of course, sometimes it’s a more expensive case. And then once they get there, the hospital is free, the doctors donate their time, they are taken from the airport, have a place to stay, it’s all taken care of.”
While some of the children who are sent abroad were born with heart defects, others, according to Hess, develop problems beginning with something as simple as an infection.
Heidi Hess
“When a child in Belize has an infection, maybe even from a small cut on their foot or from having a sore throat and they do not receive the adequate antibiotics, the infection gets into the blood stream and then it attacks the heart. Parents need to comply when the doctors tell them that the child needs to take antibiotics. They must give the child the antibiotics for the full course and not just one day.”
“A very sad story of a four year old boy who had an infection; he was supposed to receive a long term course of antibiotics and he only received one day. Now his heart has a very bad infection and one of his heart valves has actually been eaten away by the bacteria and he’s never going to have a normal heart again.”
Last year seventeen children were sent abroad for advanced care through Rotary’s Gift of Life programme. Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.
Rotary finances the programme by fundraising. It’s latest effort is the play Breadfruit Kingdom.
