2-month-old baby with congenital heart disease needs help

(Baonghean.vn) - Bui Thi Thanh Xuan (born in 2017) has a congenital heart disease, although she was scheduled for surgery in the program "Heart for Children" on October 20. However, due to the severity of her condition, her parents had to borrow a large sum of money for emergency surgery and could not wait for the opportunity to have free surgery.

Xuan is the third daughter of Bui Xuan Dung (31 years old) and Nguyen Thi Thich (29 years old) in Xuan Dien hamlet, Thanh Xuan commune (Thanh Chuong). Their eldest daughter is 7 years old, but is malnourished, weighing only 13 kg. Xuan was born less than a month ago and was diagnosed with a complex congenital heart disease. She often has attacks of cyanosis and difficulty breathing, and at times it seemed like she would not survive.

Ms. Thich was exhausted from worry and not eating enough, so she had no milk to breastfeed her baby.

After taking the child to Viet Duc Hospital for examination and treatment, Xuan was arranged by the hospital to be included in the program "Heart for Children", according to which he would receive free heart surgery on October 20. However, due to poor health and many episodes of acute apnea, his life was in danger. The treating doctor recommended that the family have surgery as soon as possible for a higher success rate. To save their child, Dung and his wife decided to pay for the surgery in advance.

On September 19, Xuan had heart surgery at Viet Duc Hospital. To have their child's heart surgery, Dung and Thich had to borrow 65 million VND from the District Agricultural Bank, pay 50 million VND for the surgery, and pay the rest for medicine and travel.

His family is poor, each year they grow 3 sao of rice in one crop, yielding 900 kg of rice. Dung also works as a carpenter for the villagers, earning an additional 2 million VND per month. In March 2016, the family received a loan of 40 million VND from the Women's Union under the "hunger eradication and poverty reduction" program to buy a cow, but one of the cows died, losing both capital and debt, making things even more difficult.

After the surgery, the baby was in an incubator, the mother spread out a mat and lay in the hospital hallway, only daring to go out to the gate every day to buy a cheap meal for about 15,000 VND to ease her hunger because her money was exhausted. The husband had to go home to take care of the two children and go to work to earn money.

Ms. Thich was exhausted and did not have enough milk to breastfeed her baby, so the doctor advised her to give her baby formula milk to help her fight the disease. Accordingly, the average monthly cost of buying milk for Xuan was approximately 3 million VND.

Ms. Thich and her child are in the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Department of Viet Duc Hospital waiting for surgery.

Every day, when she mixed milk and brought it to her child in the isolation room, looking through the glass door at her little child with wires and machines around him, she felt her heart tighten. She just wished for some gesture from her child towards her so that she could gain more strength to fight the disease with her child...

Knowing that if they waited, they would get free heart surgery and not have to borrow a large sum of money, but to save their child's life, the couple had to shoulder a huge debt. Currently, Dung and Thich are in dire need of your support to have more funds to help Thanh Xuan recover soon and ease the family's debt burden.

Ha Linh