Understanding Congenital Heart Disease: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments

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Congenital heart defects refer to defects in the heart that children are born with. These are one of the most common congenital defects globally. In India too, 200,000+ children are born with a congenital heart defect (CHD). These are the numbers of the cases that are recorded – there maybe many more which go undiagnosed and hence untreated. Only 25 per cent of the children diagnosed with a congenital heart defect are able to get the required treatment. A lack of awareness and access to resources are the biggest challenges in children getting timely treatment. Organisations like Genesis Foundation, a congenital heart foundation India has been taking steps to both build awareness and provide financial treatment to those who cannot afford the cost of treatment. The treatment for CHD is expensive and families that do not earn enough to meet their daily needs have to depend on funds they receive as a congenital heart disease donation to support the treatment. Symptoms of Congenital Heart

How Charitable Donations Online Help In Child Heart Surgery

When the lives of young children, the future of the world, hang in the balance due to a condition they have absolutely no control over, the future starts looking grey. In India, over 200,000 kids have a heart defect at birth, i.e, a Congenital Heart Defect, affecting their entire lives ahead of them. Most of them have to get not one but many surgeries of varying severity to combat this illness.

Imagine the plight of a parent who has to see their child suffer from something as serious as a heart problem. To add to it, they find out the problem is critical and the child needs multiple rounds of life-altering  surgeries. Now, to add to it, the parents don’t have the affordability to fund the medical procedures. Just the thought of it gives you chills, doesn’t it?

Here’s what we can do about it. Whilst we as individuals may not be able to directly provide the required medical aid to the child or reach out to the family, there is a way to help them alleviate their agony of having to see their child suffer. Reaching out to an NGO for child heart surgery in India or providing charitable donations online to orgnaisations working in this area are an effective way to help.

Sometimes, it skips our notice that even small acts of kindness through giving have multiplicative effects on the lives of those children and their families. In a critical moment for a child tiding over through the illness, live saving charitable donations are often their only hope.

Paediatric surgeries for Congenital Heart Defects affecting children are unfortunately accompanied by the insurmountable financial burden of stacked medical bills, high surgical costs, doctor’s fees, etc. They often require advanced medical and surgical equipment, specialised technology, and medicines that are not readily available at regular medical facilities and force the already distressed families into paying more to acquire these. This also inevitably leads to longer pre-surgical hospital stays and ICU stays post-surgery which ensure critical care for recovering children.

When families, especially from low-income backgrounds, are faced with the costs of these expensive procedures, their only focus remains on their unwell child. But the reality of the financial weight is something they can’t escape. The excruciating pain of being unable to provide their child with the necessary care they require leads to their frustration of feeling absolutely helpless. In the absence of insurance and lack of information on the support they can receive from an NGO for child heart surgery, many families end up selling their assets or taking loans which puts them in a cycle of debt.

And this is the area where a little support from magnanimous, invisible hands is their saving grace.

Advancements in technology have made it possible for people to sit at home and offer their support without moving an inch and saving a life by extension. Direct donations to the family can be used towards the surgeries or medical costs. Charitable donations online coming through multiple platforms to the research centres can also help devise solutions for future cases and reduce the cost significantly for many more children faced with the same conditions in the years to come.

Creating an online community and offering support through donations can also provide momentary support and empowerment to the family that is already trying to battle emotional turbulence through this time. It also creates awareness about the condition and increases the resources available for more distressed families facing a lack of support in the long run.

At the worst possible condition of the child’s life and their families, crowdfunding support and donations are not just fiscal in nature, donations an act of true benevolence as they offer emotional relief in addition to the cost of recovering from paediatric care.

Organisations like Genesis Foundation, an NGO for child heart surgery in India have been working extensively to provide the necessary support to the families of the lesser privileged children diagnosed with Congenital Heart Defects. They have till date supported 4600+ children suffering from a critical medical illness. They are able to do this through corporate donations to charity. To know more about Genesis foundation and support their cause, click here.

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