‘Guardian angels’ fund baby surgery

He was born into turmoil in strife-torn Ukraine with a defective heart but, thanks to the skills of an Irish-funded surgical team, nine-day-old Miroslava is off the critical list.

The tiny infant was the sickest of 60 children suffering from heart defects whose surgery was delayed when the increasingly volatile situation in Ukraine forced organisers of the mercy mission to twice cancel the surgical team’s travel plans.

They finally made it to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine last weekend, much to the relief of Chernobyl Children International, which, together with the International Children’s Heart Foundation, funded the mission.

Miroslava’s parents expressed their gratitude to the surgeons and the Irish people who funded the operation through their donations to Adi Roche’s humanitarian aid agency.

“We are so grateful to the people of Ireland for saving our son. You are his guardian angels,” they said.

Surgeons from the US, Canada, and Nicaragua are continuing to work their way through the list of young cardiac patients, ranging in age from newborns to 14 years, including seven-month-old Sergei, who also suffers from ‘Chernobyl heart’, a condition attributed to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and its severe radiation poisoning effects.

In the past decade, teams of surgeons funded by the Munster charity travelled to Ukraine and Belarus six times a year to perform life-saving operations on children with Chernobyl heart.

The surgeons volunteer for the mission, reducing the cost of each operation to approximately €1,000. Between 35 and 40 children are operated on during each mission.

Riots and a worsening security situation in Kharkiv meant that a series of operations due to be carried out in April had to be suspended.

The open-heart surgery is carried out in the Regional Hospital in Kharkiv, under the direction of the renowned US cardiologist William Novick.

Of the 6,000 babies born with heart defects in Ukraine each year, 50% are not operated on because of lack of facilities and qualified medical teams in Ukraine. Without cardiac surgery, the children, who need complex open-heart operations, have little hope of living beyond five years of age.

Since 2004, more than €3m has been raised in Ireland to fund the surgery programme.