Failure Report: Year 2011 (Part 3 of 3)
June 19, 2012 by Jeremy · Comments Off
The only bad failure
is the one from which we fail to learn.
Most organizations put a premium on celebrating successes at the end of every year—we certainly do!
But we also believe that we have a great deal to learn from our failures, so we endeavor to share them and the lessons we’ve learned in hopes of avoiding those same mistakes in the future.
When seeking to tackle intractable problems in an environment like Iraq, missed opportunities, missteps, false starts, and failures are par-for-the-course. There will be no improvement in the political situation in Iraq, in the economy, in healthcare, or in the pursuit of peace without a number of flops and failures along the journey. If we already knew what worked, we all would’ve implemented it by now and moved on.
The truth is, neither the American government nor the Iraqi—neither international nor local NGOs—truly know what works in Iraq. Most of us are making educated guesses and seeking to rightly adapt programs and principles that have proven successful at other times in Iraq or in other parts of the world.
From this point forward, I want to provide you with an annual (and sometimes real-time) assessment of our failures. In absence of such previous reports, I will use a few minutes to highlight our most meaningful setbacks, failures and lessons learned to date.
The three major failures of 2011, to be covered in this report are:
Failure #2: High-mortality Remedy Missions in February/March 2011 (Read about Failure #2 here)
Failure #3: The Loss of Our Sulaymaniyah, Iraq Surgery Site as a Major Developmental Partner; Lack of Surgical Capacity Increase As a Result of Remedy Missions Conducted
Let’s get started…
Failure #3: The Loss of Our Sulaymaniyah, Iraq Surgery Site as a Major Developmental Partner
Unfortunately, it became obvious in May 2011, after completing two Remedy Missions to the Sulaymaniyah Center for Heart Disease, that local organizations and hospital leadership were not committed to the partnership. In-fighting over child selection, credit sharing and cost sharing dogged the nascent partnership from day one.
We struggled for one year to make the partnership work. But ultimately, we failed to keep it all together. What we deemed to be petty lines in the sand gave us deep concerns over the ability of local players to see our program through to the 5-year completion that we had all discussed and envisioned.
Our March 2011 Remedy Mission IV was a huge disappointment in many ways. We went back to the drawing board and made a few required upgrades before our international team would agree to work again in the hospital.
By May 2011, as we tried to put the final touches on our next mission to the center, the local hospital had failed to made requisite upgrades in hardware, medications and supplies.
In consultation with our international partners, we ultimately issued a vote of “no confidence” and cancelled the pending mission.
In many ways this felt like a waste—a waste of nearly 8,000 of cumulative training hours; a waste of financial resources on a program that apparently lacked the willpower to see commitments through to the end, etc. All we had to show for our two missions in the city were 42 operations—including a few ground-breaking, inspirational cases; some amazing stories of peace and reconciliation; and eight deaths.
Within six months, we heard that the heart center was moving forward with an Italian team along a contract similar to the one we had originally proposed. The Italian mission in the Fall 2011 was deemed a success, and many surgeries were performed, but after the mission was completed rumors again circulated about local politics and an apparent inability to mobilize the center toward a long-term contract with the Italian team.
In a January 2012 meeting with the Director of Health for the province, we inquired about the number of surgeries that had been performed since our team and the Italian team had conducted three surgical missions to the city. To our great disappointment, the health director laughed and asked if we were joking, saying that the hospital’s surgical capacity had not improved in the previous year, in spite of the three missions. He laid the blame at the feet of local staff and the politics and health and not at the feet of the international teams that had attempted to help.
Lessons Learned:
I’m not entirely sure we’ve learned all there is to learn from this yet. Our inability to woo or influence the hospital leadership into making the necessary upgrades was frustrating, but it is still unclear how we could have sweetened the deal or foreseen it coming prior to the May 2011 deadline that we set.
I am grateful that we made the decision to pull the plug on the program rather than continue to invest valuable resources (from all parties) into a stagnate program. The cumulative work done by international teams in the Center over the course of one year should have led to a measurable increase in surgical capacity. That is how our programs are designed and we are seeing an increase in capacity in other cities.
One question that we have contemplated is the idea of exclusivity in our contracts with a hospital. Should we insist on exclusive rights to train in a hospital, in an effort to increase commitment, decrease the opportunity for communication breakdowns and competing interests, etc? In the southern cities of Iraq where we work (where security risks are a much greater concern and where development is further behind the northern cities), we do not have competing interests. This appears to have created a greater loyalty and a healthier trust between our international and local teams than anything we were able to achieve in Sulaymaniyah. Our inclination continues to be against such exclusivity demands, but the question has come up as we seek to understand what went wrong and how we can avoid it in the future.
We cut our losses before running a mission in a dangerous environment. Perhaps most importantly, we cut our losses on a program that showed little organizational leadership and, in the words of the health director himself, zero increase in surgical output resulting from our educational, material, and infrastructural inputs. While the loss itself is a huge disappointment and I feel a personal sense of failure for my inability to cobble together a solution, it could have been so much worse.
Conclusion:
It has been an exhilarating year in so many ways. But the above failures have been sobering. Yes, children are alive that may not be if we had not intervened. But it is undoubtedly true that children have died because we intervened. If our mandate is primum non nocere—first, do no harm—then it is cleared that we have failed on that front at least a few times this year. At least one was related to indecisiveness—a leadership failure on my part. Some of the other deaths were to be expected given the risks that were clearly communicated to the family. But we do not only seek to “do no harm.” We have another object in view: we seek to do good. And we did not attain the good that we desired in our now defunct partnership. For reasons to which we are not privy, they have failed to increase their surgical output as a result of our efforts. We made the right decision walking away from the partnership for the time being. We will remain open to reengaging in the future if local conditions change.
I am most impressed and proud of our team’s willingness to confront and respond to failure on a trip-by-trip basis. When it became obvious that a mission could not run without an international cardiologist, we responded. When the local conditions required staggering the deployment of extra nursing staff so that ICU care could extend in a professional manner beyond the duration of the official trip itself, we responded. And when we were urged to move ahead with a mission in spite of conditions that we believed to be unsafe, we responded by canceling the trip.
There are at least a few viable philosophies as to how one should develop a pediatric cardiac care program. Some progressive; some conservative. Some are boring and more predictable; others are inspiring and innovative. We are proud to work with professionals who employ different methodologies and adhere to different philosophies of development. We will no doubt continue to face difficult days as we face down death and attempt to eradicate the backlog of Iraqi children waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery. But we envision a day in the future when every child across the country has access to the care they need within a 3 hour car ride. And we will continue to labor toward that end.
If you have any questions or concerns about this report, the decisions we’ve made, or the direction we are going, please email me at your convenience. I would love to hear from you.
Failure Report: Year 2011 (Part 1 of 3)
May 3, 2012 by Jeremy · Comments Off
The only bad failure
is the one from which we fail to learn.
Most organizations put a premium on celebrating successes at the end of every year—we certainly do!
But we also believe that we have a great deal to learn from our failures, so we endeavor to share them and the lessons we’ve learned in hopes of avoiding those same mistakes in the future.
When seeking to tackle intractable problems in an environment like Iraq, missed opportunities, missteps, false starts, and failures are par-for-the-course. There will be no improvement in the political situation in Iraq, in the economy, in healthcare, or in the pursuit of peace without a number of flops and failures along the journey. If we already knew what worked, we all would’ve implemented it by now and moved on.
The truth is, neither the American government nor the Iraqi—neither international nor local NGOs—truly know what works in Iraq. Most of us are making educated guesses and seeking to rightly adapt programs and principles that have proven successful at other times in Iraq or in other parts of the world.
From this point forward, I want to provide you with an annual (and sometimes real-time) assessment of our failures. In absence of such previous reports, I will use a few minutes to highlight our most meaningful setbacks, failures and lessons learned to date.
The three major failures of 2011, to be covered in this report are:
Failure #2: High-mortality Remedy Missions in February/March 2011
Failure #3: The Loss of Our Sulaymaniyah, Iraq Surgery Site as a Major Developmental Partner; Lack of Surgical Capacity Increase As a Result of Remedy Missions Conducted
Let’s get started…
Failure #1: Leadership Indecisiveness on the Case of Six-Year-old Yahya
This was a major lesson in leadership that potentially affects every area of our organizational and team life, couched in the saga of one very specific family.
I was walking home from work one night in Iraq in early 2010, when my phone rang. On the other end of the line was a man, knocking on the door back at my office, in hopes of meeting me and presenting the case of his nephew, Yahya, to me for surgical consideration. I asked if we could meet tomorrow, but he was insistent and there seemed to be great urgency in his voice. Instead of postponing the meeting, I gave him directions to my home and met with him over tea.
From early on, the situation was less than ideal. Yahya had already received one charitable heart surgery and the second one that was being requested was bound to be difficult.
In our 2007-2010 Failure Report, I noted our decision to restrict the complexity of children we sent abroad for surgery after a series of deaths caused us to reconsider our risk tolerance. Yahya was definitely on the high end of our new risk tolerance.
I chose to refuse surgery to the family based on our new priorities.
Months later, after a new check-up, Yahya’s mother and father brought him into our office to inquire again about the possibility of surgery. I’ll never forget sitting with them in my office explaining our decision to decline surgery funding for Yahya.
Then, with all the persistence that you would expect from a mother, she appealed to me again not to turn away their little boy.
I think one thing that non-profit directors and program directors fail to say often enough is this: “I am a human. I’m swayed by the kindness or brashness of our patients and, at times, it heavily influences how I make selection decisions.”
I could not continue to say “no” any longer. I said “yes” (with conditions).
Our surgeon in Istanbul was clear from the beginning that his surgery would require a “valved conduit” (an additional $5,000 expense or more) and licensing agreements in Turkey at the time had caused a shortage of such devices.
Cody Fisher (Development Director) did a great job reaching an agreement with Medtronic providing Yahya with a donated conduit, but the timing of receiving the conduit was still beholden to the licensing agreements that were being worked out in Istanbul.
All these factors together ultimately led to Yahya missing our July 2010 surgery group to Istanbul. We refunded the family’s portion of the money they had contributed for his surgery.
Shortly thereafter, in August 2010, we conducted our first Remedy Mission inside Iraq—our new programatic focus on localized training and development. The mission was such a huge success, I became convinced that we needed to cease all funding for outside surgeries and focus solely on development work inside the country.
But I also felt a sense of commitment to Yahya and his family, who were basically caught in the transitional period between one programatic focus and another.
What I should have done at that point was send Yahya to surgery in Turkey, finish our commitments there, take the free valved conduit from Medtronic, and finish our work in Turkey strongly. What I did instead was place Yahya on an upcoming Remedy Mission and take the Turkey option off the table for the family.
What I didn’t account for very well in that decision was how the complexity of Yahya’s case would fare in a development setting; a setting in which local capacity was far below that which he would have received in Istanbul.
In the chaos of Remedy Mission IV, a number of things went badly. Among them, Yahya’s family probably did not receive the proper explanations that they should have about the risks of his surgery and they probably felt very vulnerable about the decision to go forward with the risky surgery or forever miss their opportunity.
It was difficult to assess all this in real time, in part because I was so hopeful for Yahya and his family. In my optimism, I did not see or recognize a few red flags. But even that is not the whole truth… I remember hesitations—“red flags”—even as I sit here today. I willingly suppressed anything that was not hopeful and optimistic. It seemed noble, brave and right.
But he wasn’t my child.
Yahya’s surgery presented many complications that ultimately required doctors to operate through the night. When Yahya arrived in ICU around 5 or 6 a.m. the next morning, he was deemed stable enough for the surgical team to go to the hotel for a few hours of sleep. Before their bus even arrived at the hotel, though, Yahya had passed away in ICU.
I would not normally include a single death in a year-end Failure Report. My point is not that I feel bad and need catharsis. It’s just that Yahya was different, and not only because he had a name or because his family hosted us for dessert in their home and shared tea in mine. No, Yahya was different because I flipped-flopped on the family so many times. I said “no.” Then “yes.” Then “no” again. And then “yes.” And then he died.
Organizationally, the failure was related to a lesson we were just beginning to identify in our 2007-10 Failure Report: we are not the best qualified to select children for surgery. The suggested way forward at that time is still right: we have handed child selection over to a committee of local healthcare providers and our international surgical team. There will still be deaths that we regret deeply, but they will be less a function of our role and influence in the child selection process.
Personally, the failure was related to my inability to make a decision and stick with it. I always had a bad feeling about Yahya’s likelihood to endure surgery. That was why I denied funding more than a year prior to his death. I had good reason to deny funding. But I went back on my hunch. Fair enough… I wanted to give a family a chance. But I never really got over my fears of his death and that made me unwilling to go all in with the family. I hedged over spending extra money on his expensive valved conduit. And even when the conduit was donated, I found other reasons to delay surgery for fear of spending a lot of money (including the family’s) on a surgery about which I was always suspicious.
Lessons Learned:
1. It’s OK to change one’s mind; but a leadership “Yes” or “No” should mean something. It hurts everyone involved to say one thing, give the impression of support, and never fully get behind one’s own decision. In this case, it played a role in Yahya’s death. He may have died in Istanbul just the same. The death itself is not the failure here. The faulty, character-flawed process by which I made life-altering decisions is.
I said “no.” I should have stood my ground. Or I said “yes” and I should have given that family my fullest “yes” ever. Instead, I said “yes” and stayed on the fence. I won’t do that again.
2. We are not qualified to select children. We are too emotionally attached and we do not possess the knowledge to make a right decision about a patient’s candidacy for surgery. We have handed child selection over to a collaboration between local cardiologists and our international surgical teams.
If you have any questions or concerns about this report, the decisions we’ve made, or the direction we are going, please email me at your convenience. I would love to hear from you.
Remembering Our First Remedy
December 4, 2010 by Cody · Comments Off
It’s hard to believe that it’s been four months since our first Remedy Mission. When we landed in August we met 25 Kurdish and Arab children with severe heart defects. Over the past few weeks we’ve had the privilege to see those kids again, this time with WHOLE and HEALTHY hearts inside of them.
Remember Mohammad Fwad?
He was our last child to be taken out of ICU from the first Remedy. Not too long ago we stood alongside his mother and father, watching Mohammad recover so much slower than any of us were wanting. Recently we were able to stand alongside his mother again, this time being entertained by Mohammad and his new bike circling around the living room! He couldn’t be doing any better! To the side of the room was his three month old baby brother who was born the day Mohammad received his life-saving heart surgery.
It’s late for a Thanksgiving post – we know. But how can we not still be so overjoyed and THANKFUL for these healthy boys!
While we so often celebrate the moment a child enters the operating room and the moment that same child has fully recovered with a healthy heart, there are so many things that need to happen before that child even has a chance to be operated on. This is why we’re thankful for our staff here. They serve as each family’s personal advocate to fight for their child every step of the way. They help provide life-saving heart surgeries to one family at a time. Once we provide a family that, we follow up with each child until they’re fully recovered.
Four weeks ago, my wife and I moved back to Iraq, which is where we met in 2007. Since we’ve been back we’ve had the joy to accompany our local staff to the homes and families of each child that’s been helped these past few months. They know each address by heart and the parents love our staff like we are their own. We can’t blame them. We’re so incredibly thankful we have these friends.
We’re thankful for kids like Mohammad. We’re thankful for our local family advocates and all of our global advocates like YOU. You make this possible!
Our Partners:
You Just Helped More Kids in 12 Days Than Any 12 Month Period in Our History… for Less!
September 13, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Deeya is alive and doing well at home today because of the surgery you provided for her in Iraq!
Wow! What a phenomenal trip it has been these last few weeks as you have brought a new remedy to the children of Iraq through the surgical and nursing team of Dr. William Novick. It’s high time we update your impact to help Iraqis make a better future for themselves and their children.
The total expense for our first Remedy Mission was approximately $90,000. This amount was further subsidized by the Director of Health in our city and the Kurdish Regional Government in Washington D.C., and the International Children’s Heart Foundation. The balance was underwritten by you!
This family was not yet chosen for surgery… they are still waiting for our next Remedy Mission.
Locally, Remedy Mission was a great success. We ended the week at dinner with the governor and the health director where they invited us to start our next Remedy Mission as quickly as possible. When we suggested May 2010 as a next date, all the surgeons and the health director rallied together to urge us to begin again in February instead.
Our current proposal is a five year plan comprising four trips per year to make the Sulaymaniyah Cardiac Center a premier facility in the region that is able to perform 12-14 surgeries per week without foreign assistance. We estimate that this will cost $1.5m and we are currently talking with the local authorities in hopes that they will choose to shoulder the majority of that expense.
During Remedy Mission ICHF and local surgeons performed 25 corrective cardiac procedures. Put differently, we helped more kids in 12 days than we have in any 12 month period to date… at a massive savings compared to our work in Iraq… with hands-on training for Iraqi doctors and nurses! A typical all-inclusive surgery in Istanbul costs us $10,000 (after subsidies). That expense is usually shared among the family of the child, local and international donors. The typical PLC international donor portion of a surgery in Turkey is $3-5k.
Cody Fisher reviews the list of kids who received surgery and kids still in line for February 2011.
The numbers for Remedy Mission look much different. Not only are we able to work in partnership with others more during Remedy Missions, but every surgery represents a local development and training opportunity. The all-inclusive price for all partners was approximately $3,600 per child (compared to $10k in Istanbul and much more in the States or Europe).
Remedy Mission has taught us a lot about being fiscally and developmentally responsible. Therefore, in an effort to redouble our commitment to long-term local solutions, we will be increasing our Remedy Mission funding in hopes of facilitating four Remedy Missions in our current city in 2011.
The following families are still waiting in line for our help…. Will you be the remedy? Donate the amount of your choice below to get our next Remedy Mission off to a strong start!
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With you,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
The Good & The Bad: A Report On One of Our Remedy Kids Who Did Not Make It Through
September 7, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Video by Jon Vidar
We strive for transparency here; not marketing or public relations fluff. At the beginning of our Remedy Mission we chose a few children to feature on the website. At that time, we did not know which ones would survive and which ones would die; who would have an easy course and who would have a most difficult course. We chose them for reasons of timing, dramatic tension, and relational connectivity.
One of the families that was NOT chosen for feature, was actually concurrently featured by a photographer friend that we hired for some of the other work on Remedy Day #1. Jon Vidar had been out to meet Samal and her family weeks before Remedy Mission formally began. Jon was eager to see Samal get the surgery she needed. When he began her story for his personal project, we all had assumed and hoped that she would be one of the ones who benefited greatly from the surgery.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. Push play above to watch Jon’s excellent piece above to learn more about the situation in Iraq, our Remedy Mission solution, and Samal’s story in particular.
The one thing the ending slide does not capture with enough nuance is the bitter fact that Samal’s brain probably died before a knife was ever laid to her chest after her oxygen levels crashed to 10% for approximately 12 minutes. In that 12 minutes the O.R. team prepared her for surgery, opened her chest, and put her heart on the bypass machine, but she was without oxygen for far too long before they could intervene; they feared she was brain dead. They proceeded with the surgical correction for her heart and took precautionary measures after surgery to give her the greatest chance at recovery, but Samal never pulled through; she was probably too far gone before the surgery technically began.
There are no words or stories, prayers or personal presence that makes a loss like this more palatable. It’s dark and horrifying for the family; and, to a lesser degree, for those of us who invested a tiny bit of ourselves in Samal and her well-being.
There are no good words to wrap up a post like this… but there are more stories of hope to come.
With you,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
Our Partners:
Remedy Mission Ushers in Wave of Voluntarism, Lays Groundwork for Future Initiatives in Iraq
August 31, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Amed Omar has volunteered for us for more than two years. Amed invested heavily each day into the kids, showed an eagerness to use his knowledge of English and local languages to help in the training of local nurses in the Intensive Care Unit. | Photos by Heber Vega
As our first Remedy Mission has played out in Iraq over the last two weeks, we have been extremely encouraged by the number of people coming out, emailing, and calling in hopes of giving what they can as volunteers to assist in the effort. For years, a lack of voluntarism and a sense of entitlement among many throughout Iraq has caused us great concern for the future of crowd-sourced charitable organizations like ours. In Iraq many sit back and wait for the government to do it all. Too few go the extra mile of engaging the process, flexing their creativity, and creating the change that they ostensibly want to see.
But that is decidedly not how it was this week with Remedy Mission. We had 17 volunteers come out at some time or another to see the children, play with them, donate time, goods, and money, translate, function in administrative roles, write, advocate, promote, and – perhaps most importantly – become personally invested in the long-term drama of creating a long-term local solution for children in Iraq waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery. In addition to the 17 who actually came and volunteered, we had another six on a waiting list that we simply could not absorb. We had to turn local Arab and Kurdish volunteers away!
Shahad Mohammad was a first-time volunteer with us this Remedy Mission after making friends with some of our summer interns. Shahad persisted in seeking volunteer opportunities, played with the kids, translated into Arabic, and involved others in her community in our work.
As we look to the future of charitable and social services in Iraq, we are encouraged by the diversity of youth and adults, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that comprised our volunteer group these last two weeks for our Remedy Mission. If we can continue to generate this degree of local support and leverage the good intentions and much-needed hands and feet of the people of Iraq, the kids of Iraq (where we live at least) are going to be fine under the care of their local volunteers, government and healthcare professionals.
With you,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
Our Partners:
Cardiac Caths Save Lives, Time, Space, Money, & Dodge Dishonor for Females Before Marriage
August 29, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Photos by Heber Vega
This week we were able to help three children without subjecting them to the trauma of an open-heart surgery. A procedure in which a catheter is inserted through the femoral artery, all the way into the heart, and ultimately used to correct a number of different heart defects.
Recovery times from these types of procedures are considerably shorter and the procedure itself is considerably less risky for the patient. These patients don’t stay “parked” in an already crowded Intensive Care Unit and typically end up going home in a much shorter period of time than even the fastest surgery patients.
The International Children’s Heart Foundation team prefers to use this method whenever possible, but finds it particularly helpful with older females who might otherwise be considered less desirable for marriage with a huge scar down the sternum.
All three kids who received cardiac cath intervention this week are discharged and playing safely at home; even while we have two in ICU and a handful still in the ward.
Thanks for making our training and surgery mission happen this week. This Remedy Mission and the various diagnostic, interventional, surgical, and administrative techniques learned locally this week will continue to save lives long after all these kids go home!
Have you enjoyed this week? We have! Please consider making a donation for our next mission if you believe in what we’re doing by clicking the DONATE link in the header above.
With you,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
Our Partners:
Abdulkareem is Sent Home to Diyala with a Healthy, Happy Heart and a Grateful Family
August 28, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Abdulkareem spent the last few days out of ICU recovering with his mother in the main ward. This little boy who captured our attention sometime in the Spring, is now a healthy little boy!
Abdulkareem was discharged to return home to Diyala with his mom, dad, and his big brother, Abbas. Abdulkareem’s father sent me a message from the road on his way home after this photo was taken. The message said something like, “Thank you so much for your organization and for helping my little boy. We will not forget you.“
If he had more time, I think he would have thanked you each by name with tears running down his face. You made this a reality for Abdulkareem. You made a father and a mother’s dream come true. And you prevented a big brother from growing up without a soccer-buddy.
As I write this, I’m full of tears at your kindness and generosity. I cannot even imagine what order of gratitude Abdulkareem’s family must feel toward you.
WIth You,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
Our Partners:
Baby Noor Continues Healing Post Surgery; Fluid Around Chest Only Concern
August 27, 2010 by Jeremy · 1 Comment
Photos by Heber Vega
[ ABOVE ] Baby Noor arrives in the Intensive Care Unit all smiles for her morning check-up. Dr. Sri Rao and Kathryn Frazier, RN from the International Children’s Heart Foundation care for her tenderly and take in her joy as our time together in Iraq draws near an end. Noor doesn’t yet know that the procedure to come is going to replace her smiles with tears…
[ ABOVE ] But the tears come loud and the screams come fast as the ICHF and local doctors and nurses begin working together to drain the fluid from inside her chest cavity. Nonetheless, that scream is a sign of a kid with a healthier heart than when she arrived!
[ ABOVE ] ICHF Intensivist Marc Anders administers positive pressure ventilation to Baby Noor during the procedure. The Intensive Care Unit is the area of greatest concern for children in the local hospital. While surgeons and cardiologists locally continue to improve in their training at encouraging rates, local nurses are thrown into the mix without proper training, tools, or respect. The ICHF team feels a strong desire to increase the level of respect, knowledge, and engagement among local staff in the Unit.
[ ABOVE ] Mom waits downstairs in the ward for news as to how Noor is progressing and an estimate as to when they might be allowed to return to their home in the southern most part of Iraq near Basra.
[ ABOVE ] After all is said and done, Baby Noor rests in the Unit with her baby seal, fluids, and a bit of sedation. The procedure goes well, prevents infection, and hastens the day when Baby Noor, her mom, and her dad return home… hopefully in time for the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan in few days.
WIth You,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
Our Partners:
Abdulkareem Gets His Surgery After Months of Appeals from His Loving Father
August 26, 2010 by Jeremy · Comments Off
Photos by Heber Vega; Lydia Bullock
It was around lunch time in the heat of June in Iraq when Abdulkareem’s father came into my office. He told me that his son was very sick, that he was very poor, and that he needed our help and was willing to do whatever he could to make it happen. We were preparing our July group for surgery in Turkey and one of the children had just withdrawn from the group. It looked like we might be able to squeeze Abdulkareem in at the last minute if all the right pieces fell into place quickly.
Abdulkareem’s father worked especially hard for his little boy. He traveled from his home in Diyala to Baghdad to get passports for the family. He came to the office and called regularly to see what our status was with regards to funding for his son’s place on the Turkey surgery list.
There are two days in the duration of my journey with this family that I am unlikely to forget. The first was the day that Abdulkareem’s father – Hafez Bey – looked into my eyes and, with all the passion of a protective but powerless father, said, “Just help my little boy; just do something to save my little boy.“
Unfortunately, it did not work out to take Abdulkareem to Turkey with us for various reasons and we began the race against the clock to provide Abdulkareem surgery before his condition deteriorated any further. Our as-of-yet untested next option was our first Remedy Mission in August 2010. We gave Abdulkareem a priority spot on the Remedy Mission list.
The day our surgical team arrived Hafez Bey must have seen us on the news because he called me 10 times: “Is my boy going to surgery? Mr Jeremy, just do something to help my little boy!”
Photo by Heber Vega
There is one other day in the life of this family that I won’t forget – the day Abdulkareem had surgery earlier this week. I remember it so distinctly because after the surgery Hafez Bey grabbed me and kissed me and gave me an emotional “thank you” for making good on our commitment to his family.
One of the things we always try to explain to families is the presence of hundreds of people in the States and Europe – people like you – who work together to make every surgery possible. Of course, parents appreciate the ability to personalize their gratitude, but we talk about you frequently because we could not have saved Abdulkareem’s life without your many gifts to our Remedy Mission.
If you like what you’ve been able to be a part of this week with us (and there seem to be hundreds of you viewing the website and videos each day), please take two minutes to give toward the next Remedy Mission, the next Abdulkareem, and to the next father who is eagerly waiting for someone to help his little child. Please donate any amount of your choice below.
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WIth You,
Remedy Missions are international pediatric heart surgery teams that we bring to Iraq to to perform lifesaving heart surgeries and develop the infrastructure for the future. If you’re on Twitter this week be sure to use the #Remedy or #RemedyMission hashtag to describe all the good news coming out of Iraq this week via @preemptivelove and @babyheart_org. If you’re on Facebook, “Share” this story with the button below.
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