Children's Heart- LIFE-SAVING CARDIAC SURGERY

Mission Bambini Foundation, as part of the Children’s Heart Program, has been engaged in the treatment of childhood heart diseases around the world since 2005. In order to save children with severe heart conditions, born in the poorest countries, one of the ways of intervention is to provide medical assistance on site.

Medical missions can have two different goals: supporting and training the local èquipe in difficult surgeries or supporting the medical team in screening patients, sharing knowledge and best practices to apply when visiting a potentially cardiopathic child.

During the last expedition, Mission Bambini’s team flew to Nepal to support the local medical èquipe in screening around 12,000 children, intercepted by involving 18 primary and secondary schools. 14 of them will need a surgical operation in the next months.

Among The screened children we met P., a 4 years old child with a sever heart condition.

P. was accompanied by her grandmother aa both her parents cannot take care of her.

Her father had developed an addiction to alcohol, which soon turned into a problematic behavior and led him to lose his job and divorce from P.’s mother.

On her own and with a child to feed and take care of, the mum needed to find a job quickly: she was hired as a construction yard worker in Dubai.

P.’s mum can come back to Nepal only once every two weeks for just 7 days, after which she has to fly back to work.

The situation, already enough hard on itself, left no other choice to P. and her mother but to ask the child’s grandmother to be the main caregiver.

Despite these difficulties, a bright future nevertheless lies ahead for little P. In fact, she has been placed on the list of children waiting for a heart operation at Mission Bambini, which will be able to guarantee her a better life expectancy and quality of life. The operation, scheduled for the next mission in March 2023 if more serious cases are not identified, will allow her heart to function better.

The Mission Bambini  Foundation, as part of the Children's Heart Program, has been engaged in the treatment of childhood heart disease around the world since 2005.
In order to save children with severe heart disease who are born in the poorest countries, one of the ways of intervention is to provide arrangements and assistance to travel to Italy for children who can not have surgery in their own country, due to lack of hospital facilities and/or sufficiently specialized personnel.
G. Sier
Little Sier was born in Tirana in 2019 with congenital heart disease, which was diagnosed at the age of 2 months and since then she has been regularly followed up with outpatient visits while waiting for surgery. She lives with her mom and dad in Tirana and recently had a baby sister born.
Sier has always demonstrated herself to be a strong child, and this has allowed her to have a fairly regular growth path. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and border closures, she had to wait longer than expected and developed bacterial endocarditis.
Finally, at the end of July 2022 came the confirmation of his hospitalization in Italy, at Niguarda Hospital in Milan.
Sier and his dad were followed by Mission Bambini regarding all travel arrangements, in terms of airline tickets, visas, and reception.
Thanks to the Foundation's volunteers, the dad and his little girl were followed every step of the way in such a delicate situation as heart surgery in a foreign country.
Fortunately, the surgery went well according to expectations and today little Sier is doing great and can fully enjoy her childhood. Since the surgery was conclusive, she will not need surgery in the future. She will be visited regularly by the Albanian cardiologist to monitor her gro