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Florida Photography/Filmmaking Duo Document Hope in Iraq
Thousands of Children in Iraq Waiting for Life-Saving Surgeries See Medical Miracles Outside the Country
Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, February 24, 2009
The Preemptive Love Coalition is excited to announce the early summer arrival of photography/filmmaking duo Matt Addington and Michael Dalton to Iraq where they will use their creative skills to document the thousands of children waiting in line for life-saving heart surgery outside the country.
In the 1980’s Saddam Hussein is known to have perpetrated over 280 chemical attacks against the people of Iraq and Kurdistan, most notoriously on the city of Halabja on March 16, 1988. These chemical bombardments are one of the likely culprits in today’s high incidence of congenital and childhood heart disease in Iraq. Other factors such as intra-family marriage, poverty, and malnutrition have also played a role.
Addington and Dalton aspire to convey both the tragedy and the hope of a growing list of thousands of children suffering from heart disease as they wait in line for surgical solutions that only exist outside of Iraq. From the pair’s website: “As we started working on the logistics…we became impassioned about what [the Preemptive Love Coalition] is doing. This became an adventure of love where we saw that our passions would be magnified as we interact with the people of Iraq, creating relationships and putting faces to their hurt for their country.”
Beyond the awareness they will raise for the children and the work of PLC the pair hope to produce and distribute a DVD and a book of photography documenting the “[t]he hope of a nation rebuilding; the hope of children being given a second chance at life.”
Since late 2007 the Preemptive Love Coalition has funded life-saving heart surgeries for 34 Iraqi children, including the seven fully-funded surgeries in Istanbul, Turkey during Valentine’s week 2009.
Learn more about the Preemptive Love Coalition by visiting www.preemptivelove.org.
The Preemptive Love Coalition exists to eradicate the backlog of thousands of Iraqi children waiting in line for life-saving heart surgeries outside the country and to increase the dialogue between international communities at odds.
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For more information about the Preemptive Love Coalition or to schedule an interview with executive director Jeremy Courtney, please call 806-853-9131 in the U.S. or +964 770-356-9004 in Iraq. Or contact by email at jeremy@preemptivelove.org.
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Give Life Instead of Chocolate This Valentine’s Day
Preemptive Love Coalition Announces Valentine’s Day Focus to Help Eradicate Heart Disease in Children from Iraq
Kurdistan, Iraq, February 8, 2009 –The Preemptive Love Coalition has launched its Valentine’s Day Focus: The Great Eight, a campaign that is focused on raising funds to provide surgery and treatment for eight Iraqi children with life threatening heart disease. The money earned from this campaign will be used to pay for the travel expenses required to get the children to Turkey, for the surgery itself, and then back to Iraq.
“Anyone can give paper cards and chocolates. Most of that ends up in the trash anyway. Love is best expressed by sacrifice and endurance.” said Jeremy Courtney Executive Director Preemptive Love Coalition, “We wanted to give lovers and friends the chance to give a gift that will keep on living as a enduring testament to the power of love. Saving what one might otherwise give to chocolate and cards suddenly becomes a pool of life-saving resources in the right hands.”
After the surgery, and once the patients are discharged from the hospital and post-op observation, the Preemptive Love Coalition will fly them back to Iraq, and the families will be enrolled in PLC’s Followthrough program for (at least) six months through which they will receive relational aftercare, social services, and various medical check-ups (dental, physical therapy, etc.).
Currently there are over 4,000 children in northern Iraq that suffer from serious forms of pediatric heart disease that require surgery for them to survive past childhood. Because of the complexity of the procedures and the diminished capacities of the local health care system, these children cannot be treated in Iraq.
The combined travel and medical costs of surgery abroad make this possibility as financially remote as it is geographically. Typically the expenses for sending one child for treatment consist of a deeply discounted total of about $10,000. This expense is more than double a typical family’s yearly income.
Last year through all partnering organizations, fewer than 150 children were able to leave Iraq for the life-saving heart surgeries they required. Yet each month, another 150 names are added to the waiting list. That means each month, they fall another year behind; each year, another decade. At the current rate many of these children will not survive long enough to reach their turn for the financial and medical assistance that they need.
The organization is continually looking for individuals or organizations that are willing to provide the funding to send these children to Turkey so that they can get the surgeries and treatment they need in order to live.
Learn more about the Preemptive Love Coalition and the Valentine’s Day campaign by visiting their website at: www.preemptivelove.org.
Contact information:
Jeremy Courtney, Executive Director
Salm Street (Telary Oskar)
Sulaymaniyah, Iraq
Tel. in Iraq +964 770 356 9004
jeremy@preemptivelove.org
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