Healing Little Hearts

Our Children’s Cardiac Advocacy Project represents approximately half a million children in Honduras who are afflicted with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). Each year over one million babies around the world, including 40,000 in the United States, are born with a congenital heart defect (March of Dimes) and in Honduras it is a much larger number. CHD is the leading cause of death from birth defects. Clearly, advocacy for the affected families is needed, along with a supportive medical team environment, on the spot treatment and awareness education. 

As a leading community organization, we at the Rotary Club of Historic Jackson Heights have a critical role in advocating for pediatric cardiology, pediatric cardiovascular surgery and CHD. For the past 10 years we have been funding, collaborating and educating our local community on the needs of the families in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Surgical procedures that are commonplace in the developed world are out of reach to poor countries. Living in one of the poorest communities of Central America, we have helped families have immediate medical care, flying them and their children to the US and Colombia for treatment. 

Our strategy is focused on collaboration with other local & national Rotary Clubs, building fundraising events and putting together community centered activities. Our campaign is ever more ambitious in providing surgery to children, training and equipping the local medical team in Honduras and constructing a new, modern pediatric cardiac center on site. 

Here is the Challenge:

• For the world's poor children, a heart defect is a death sentence. In Honduras today, children in need are awaiting to have cardiac surgery. Today, as a team with Gift of life, we are working towards a global grant, provided by the Rotary Foundation, that will allow us to operate, train and providing a new, modern Heart Center so that these children will not die.

Here is our Future Solution:

• Rotary Club of Historic Jackson Heights sponsors and equips volunteer surgical teams from leading South American teaching hospitals, for travel to San Pedro Sula Hospital in Honduras. Local clinics and hospital welcome them and together they can save the lives of these young children. While the teams are there, they are teaching the local staff how to perform the surgery and providing around the clock support. It is a collaborative effort.

Community Impact & Team Work:

• We are here for the long-term impact - besides providing training to medical professionals in modern surgical techniques, sourcing equipment and supplies to share for their continued work - our goal is, is so that the teams will no longer be needed. Belief in being a sustainable philosophy is at our core, the key to build the pediatric center and train the local medical staff ensures that the progress in care will be sustained.

Rotary Club of Historic Jackson Heights Committed to a multi-year training-to-cure mission to treat congenital heart disease in Honduras.