The per capita income in Cameroon is about $1,110; heart surgery costs about $7,000. Children die of heart disease every day because their families could not afford treatment. A four-year-old girl named (prophetically, we hope!) Success has a heart defect that she has been waiting two years to have corrected. Her parents can only afford doctor visits and medicine to monitor and mitigate her condition. We hope to be able to fund the surgery she needs -- and to also sponsor 2 more children.
An estimated 80,000 people live with congenital or acquired heart disease in Cameroon alone. This number increases by 5,000 annually, but the Cardiac Center Shisong (the only Cardiac Center in the Central African Sub region) has less than 500 on its surgical waiting lists, largely because those in need of surgery can't afford it. Many of these are children born with congenital defects that can cause extreme suffering and often death.
The Heart Foundation works tirelessly to raise funds to support the underprivileged in need of care. The Cardiac Center conducts 3 - 4 pediatric missions each year when specialist teams work together to save the lives of children born with a heart defect that has robbed them of their childhood. The money raised through this project last year sponsored successful for surgery for baby Ange. We hope to sponsor Success and two other children during the next missions in 2018.
We believe that when a community comes together to heal a heart it gets stronger, more united, and geared towards positive transformation of unhealthy systems. Such a community will not pick up arms against each other because they have a more reasonable job at hand. In addition, we believe a heart that is healed will be motivated to join the strengthened human community on its positive course- and so the chain will flow from one person to another and from generation to generation.
