Clever Charity: Children’s Heartlink

Heart disease is the most common birth defect around the world. One in every 120 children is born with a heart-defect and one-third of these children will not survive to their first birthday. Those that do survive are often so incapacitated that they are barely able to do more than eat and lay listlessly; condemned to lead unfulfilling lives.Fortunately most defects can be successfully treated as they are in the U.S.; unfortunately, the healthcare that is readily available here is not available in the developing world. Enter Children’s Heartlink, a non-profit founded in 1969 to help treat and prevent heart disease in needy children worldwide whose program last year touched more than 300,000 lives.Based in Minnesota and partnered with leading institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University, Children’s Heartlink has helped hundreds of thousands of kids since its founding. Heartlink started out bringing sick kids to the U.S. for surgery and treatment; it has since evolved to partnering with institutions in Central America, China, India, Malaysia, Kenya, Ecuador, and the Ukraine to perform surgeries overseas and help and train clinics and local hospitals to treat pediatric cardiac issues. Taking the fight to the source as it were has allowed Children’s Heartlink to touch the lives of tens of thousands of more children than it has in the past.We could go on about how valuable Heartlink’s work is, but our words couldn’t be more eloquent than, James Irangu Githiga, a father from Kenya who writes:

‘Much greetings from Nairobi, Kenya. I’m the dad of baby Trevor, and it is now exactly three weeks since his undergoing a successful open heart surgery at The Nairobi Hospital. I’m very happy to let you know we’ve noticed a significant change in him in terms of appetite and activity, and he is also very cheerful nowadays. We don’t have enough words to thank you, but please accept these words as a token of our appreciation – thank you very, very much and may God bless you abundantly in whatever you do.’
Read more stories about Heartlink’s “Medical Miracles”: http://www.childrensheartlink.org/give/give_now.asp.

Help them continue fighting the good fight: donate online at http://www.childrensheartlink.org/give/give_now.asp.

To learn more about Children’s Heartlink: http://www.childrensheartlink.org.