This was how 80 children, who were given a new lease on life with free congenital heart defects (CHDs) surgeries, bonded together on Saturday, July 1, 2023, at a fast food restaurant in Cebu City.
A year ago, these children were suffering from a debilitating illness that would have placed them in a lifetime of pain.
Yet with the help of Rotary Club Cebu’s “Gift of Life” program, which has provided free open heart and noninvasive heart surgeries for the last 12 years, these children will lead normal lives.
During the celebration of the group’s new fiscal year on Saturday, Rotary Club president Walter Yap Cang said it was a tradition to bring together the beneficiaries of the Gift of Life program to be symbols of hope.
“By tradition, on the first day of the rotary year (or the group’s fiscal year), we host an event [that] allows children to be gathered,” he told SunStar Cebu.
The civic group is composed of Cebu-based business leaders. It was established in 1932, making it the second oldest club in the country after the Rotary Club of Manila.
Gift of life
The Gift of Life is a program created in partnership with the group’s founding organization — Rotary International, which aims to provide free operations to children with CHDs in Cebu in the past 12 years.
CHDs are present at birth and can alter a baby’s heart’s shape and the way it works. It may have an impact on how blood moves from the heart to the rest of the body.
Aside from the funding from Rotary International, its club members also contribute money out of their pockets to enable the children’s operations.
Cang revealed that they used to bring the patients to the United States for their operations before deciding to have these done in Manila.
“We realized that if we keep continuing that, we can only assist a few children due to how huge the budget is allocated in every trip outside the country, so we decided to just do it here,” he said.
In total, they were able to conduct heart surgeries for around 300 children since the project’s inception in 2011.
Cang said that the cost of heart procedures in private hospitals can range from P500,000 to P1.5 million, depending on the complexity of the procedures.
Lives changed
A 37-year-old father from Consolacion town in northern Cebu is among the grateful parents whose kids received free heart surgeries.
Jomar Galang is a father of four children. Three of his kids had CHDs and were beneficiaries of the Gift of Life program.
Galang said he and his second child Yohan were flown to Dallas, Texas in 2017 for the operation. Yohan is now a healthy and robust seven-year-old.
A year later, his third child was diagnosed with the same disease. Natalie Rose, who is now five years old, was brought to San Antonio, Texas in 2018 to have her open-heart surgery there.
And just recently, Jomar’s youngest baby, Andre, who is just barely a year old, was born with the same disease. He underwent noninvasive heart surgery last January.
“I am very grateful to them. They are really of big help. Now, I am happy to see my kids functioning just like the other normal kids,” he said.