Congenital Heart Disease Treatment is possible if you are willing to share
For any woman, pregnancy can be the beginning of a new stage and the 9 months of her pregnancy are full of excitement, cravings, pain, and wait to see her baby. Nothing can compare to the happiness of holding your baby in your arms. But sometimes, this happiness is turned into sadness when your child is born with a birth defect such as Congenital Heart Disease or CHD.
It is one of the most common birth defects that refers to the structural defects that appear in the heart and blood vessels, thereby, affecting the natural mechanism of the baby’s heart.
A status report on CHD by Dr. Anita Saxena, Department of Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, states that considering a birth prevalence as 9/1000, the estimated number of children born with CHD every year in India is more than 200,000, posing a tremendous challenge for the families, society and health care system. Despite being one of the most common types of birth defects, it has no known prevention or cure and can most certainly be corrected through surgical and/or interventional procedures.
CHDs may be both simple and complex and some heart problems can be diagnosed by the baby's doctor and managed with medicines. Other infants with CHD will require surgery, soon after their birth. Defects such as patent ductus arteriosus or an atrial septal defect may simply close up on their own with the growth of the child. And then there are those with a combination of defects and who require several operations throughout their lives. And there are some children who don’t even make it to their first birthday because of inadequate healthcare facilities, timely intervention and lack of money. All this is very disheartening for the parents who want their child to live but fail to save his/her life due to the shortage of money.
What are the challenges faced by the parents of the children with CHD?
- Parents who have a baby with CHD struggle to care for a baby who may have spent most of his early months of growth in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and may have tubes or attachments to his tiny body.
- When infants undergo open-heart surgeries, their ability to learn to eat can be compromised and may have to be fed through a feeding tube. Apart from that, many children with CHD have trouble gaining weight. All this is very stressful for a parent, especially for those who don’t have enough money to support the needs of their child.
- Congenital Heart Disease treatment is very costly and there are parents who can’t afford such astronomical cost of medicines, doctor appointments and intervention. Most parents can’t provide the prescribed CHD treatment for their child and this often results to losing their child.
- Hospital visits or intervention in a city far away from a family’s hometown can mean travel and taking leave from work and a cut of salary. This can often discourage parents to travel and get treatment in metro cities which have the best facilities.
CHD can be prevented and millions of lives can be saved if we all come together to support these parents who are fighting for their children’s lives. Congenital Heart Disease treatment can be made affordable for these parents if we donate a small part of our income to them. Learn about employee giving programs Genesis Foundation has, where giving Rs 100 or more from your salary every month can go a long way.
There are a large number of foundations, NGOs, Government Organizations that are working toward providing the required resources to help these parents. Genesis Foundation is one of them, it supports the underprivileged children to get proper Congenital Heart Disease treatment on time so that tiny lives can be saved. They work directly and closely with the families and the doctors to ensure timely and best available treatment.
If you want to help these children and bring relief to their parents, donation is only a click away. Learn more about Genesis Foundation, an NGO that ensures every individual donation goes towards the treatment of saving the lives of children with CHD. To know more, visit – www.genesis-foundation.net. You can also learn about their employee giving program here - https://www.genesis-foundation.net/Give.aspx.
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