Children's Heart- LIFE-SAVING CARDIAC SURGERY

After more than a year since Mission Bambini brought a child with heart disease to Italy for surgery - due to the Covid-19 pandemic - on 6 February, a little 4-year-old Albanian boy with heart disease arrived in Milan with his mother to undergo heart surgery on 21 February at Niguarda Hospital in Milan.

Diagnostic tests on the little boy began in 2018, and in 2019 a specialist visit during a screening mission involving Dr Marianeschi - scientific head of the Cuore di Bimbi programme - revealed the need for the child to undergo cardiac surgery, 2 years after the visit, to close an inter-atrial defect.

Background
Albania is a country characterised by widespread socio-economic hardship among the population. According to the Human Development Index, the country ranks 69th out of 189 countries considered. Twenty percent of the population is under 14 years of age and the infant mortality rate under five years of age is about 8.8 children per thousand live births (Italy, 3).
At the moment in Albania there is no possibility for congenital (born with a heart defect) or acquired (born healthy but suffering from rheumatic diseases) heart patients to be operated on in their own country. The cost of operations and drugs, as well as the high level of corruption in the country, leads families with children with heart disease to seek help from NGOs and international associations to have their loved ones operated on abroad. The poorest families find themselves unable to afford the costs of having their children operated on abroad or in a private centre.
The project
With the Fondazione Mission Bambini project "Healthcare for children with heart disease paid for by the Lombardy Region", Mission Bambini is committed to offering an operating opportunity to children with heart disease on the waiting list for an operation, through the regional funds made available by the Lombardy Region. While the Lombardy Region Health Fund guarantees coverage of the cost of the hospital operation, Mission Bambini covers all out-of-hospital expenses (travel, food, accommodation, and - in this historical period - also expenses related to the pandemic situation e.g. swabs).
The project is also made possible thanks to the long-standing partnership between Mission Bambini and the "Madonnina del Grappa" Outpatient Clinic for Cardiopediatrics in Shkodër (Albania), a centre that diagnoses congenital heart disease and then performs corrective cardiac surgery in Italy. Mission Bambini is in constant collaboration with Dr. Arketa Pllumi, cardiologist at the clinic, and Sister Enza, internist with whom we are in constant contact to meet the needs of families whose children, suffering from heart disease, cannot be operated on in the country.

Reception
Little D. arrived in Milan with his mother on 6 February, welcomed by a volunteer from the Mission Bambini Foundation who took care of the shopping. Daors will be the 25th child to be operated on since 2015 thanks to Mission Bambini under the Regione Lombardia Health Fund.