Daily Star - Funding Needed To Stop Children Deaths

By Patrick Galey
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Better support services and research funding are required to prevent hundreds of children dying each year from Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), Lebanon’s leading heart charity said on Monday.
The Brave Heart Fund (BHF) launched its fifth annual awareness campaign in Beirut in cooperation with the Children’s Heart Center at the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC).
In attendance were Health Minister Mohammad Jawad Khalifeh and internationally-acclaimed film director, Nadine Labaki, who both lent their support to the project.
More than 700 babies are diagnosed each year in Lebanon with the disorder, which produces heart malformations during pregnancy, and Khalifeh said that administering treatment to those who required it was a massive task for BHF.
“With the significant number of children born with Congenital Heart Disease and the importance of this issue, the colossal job accomplished by the Brave Heart Fund is worth supporting,” he said.
Joumana Ghandour Atallah, a founding member of BHF, said that this year’s awareness campaign sought to get society more involved than ever in helping save lives.
“Many people have never heard that young children can have heart malformations. If you help these children you can save their lives,” Atallah told The Daily Star.
The campaign will highlight the fact that 98 percent of children suffering with CHD can, if properly and promptly treated, go on to live long, normal lives.
“The good side of heart problems is that most of them are totally curable,” Atallah said, and added that Lebanon was equal to the US in its operation success rate, a remarkable feat considering many severely ill children are flown to Beirut for treatment at AUBMC.
Dr. Fadi Bitar, director of AUBMC’s Children’s Heart Center, said that Beirut’s survival rates from CHD suffers could compare with the most advanced treatment centers in the world.
“The medical team is highly specialized and the clinical services provided are among the most advanced as compared to the region and international standards,” he said.
Bitar added that his center was one of the few in the world that conducts research on CHD, using international funds, “a fact that will help us understand the relatively new field of pediatric cardiology in order to someday hopefully provide prevention and early intervention,” he said.
Labaki attended Monday’s launch as a representative of civil society groups and expressed her keenness for the public to continue supporting BHF.
If left untreated, CHD can be deadly, killing 70 percent of child sufferers who lack access to medical facilities.
“[Heart defects] are the leading cause of death in the first year of life,” Atallah said. “We are dealing with kids that do need a medical intervention in the first few years of their life. In Lebanon not every child has access to health care.”
Operations, while often routine, can be “outrageously expensive,” Atallah said.
“We have to be there, ready when the kid needs it, we can’t have kids dying just because they don’t have [money for treatment],” she added.
The Brave Heart Fund has been steadily growing since its foundation in 2003. In 2009 it performed 248 surgeries, representing a 25 percent annual increase in treatment.
“We want our children to have access to the best medical centers in town,” Atallah said.
“We have to work more but it’s the community’s fund. We are as good as they make us.”
She urged more members of the public to get involved in this year’s campaign and to continue spreading the word that CHD is treatable.
“You can’t sit and watch a kid die when you know there was such a high chance of saving him,” she said.