Helping a generation of Iraqi kids with heart disease

The Preemptive Love Coalition began with a little girl in Iraq dying of a congenital heart disease. In the early summer months of 2007, I sat in the Palace Hotel in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, with a man and his little girl. The meeting had been arranged by a tea-maker I had befriended in the hotel when he learned that I had contacts who might help get this little girl out of the country for the life-saving heart surgery she had been waiting on her entire life.

At the time I was the public relations/marketing director for a different international NGO in the area, and as such, was unprepared for the conversation with this dad and daughter. I did not know anything about social work, heart disease, surgical solutions, or how to conduct an interview such as this. But as an American with seemingly infinite resources at my disposal, I knew I had to enter the fray with this family in hopes of meeting a need and making a friend. But the more I reiterated my commitment to see that the little girl receive honest consideration as a candidate for heart surgery outside the country, the more I felt deeply dissatisfied with the systems that existed to help these kids.

And this little girl was not alone in her condition. We quickly learned about another 4,000 kids waiting in line with holes in their hearts, with arteries missing or transposed and with other life-threatening heart problems. With anywhere from 30-150 children added to the list each month, the countrywide total might climb into the range of 10,000-15,000 children. Fewer than 150 children were served outside the country in 2007, meaning every quarter Iraq was falling another year behind, and every year another decade. In future blog articles, I'll write about the causes of this growing list, but the suspects include intra-family marriage, malnutrition, U.N. sanctions which inhibited early detection, and Saddam Hussein's chemical experiments and attacks against the population.

What began with a little girl dying of heart disease has resulted in 35 children being served live-saving heart surgeries in the last year and a half; thousands of conversations about the need to love our neighbors and even our enemies; and cooperation between international communities at odds.

To learn more about the Preemptive Love Coalition and to see the ways in which love is alive in Iraq, please visit PreemptiveLove.org

Photo: Ben Hodson, www.benhodson.co.uk