meet chernobyl heart child edik k.

 
With your donations, Chernobyl Children's Project International sent volunteer kids' heart surgery teams on 5 missions to Belarus and Ukraine this year.  With two more trips to go  (Kyiv and Minsk), the number of saved young lives is adding up.  In the past three weeks alone, your donations saved 17 children in Odessa and Kharkiv -- children who had been deemed "inoperable" and beyond hope.  Behind the numbers are so many personal stories, and this is one:  Meet Edik K.

  When we first met 7 month old Edik in Kharkiv, Ukraine this past June, he suffered from three separate heart defects. Emaciated, and and losing muscle, he was starving to death in spite of the loving attentions of  his mother and grandmother. For little Edik, feeding was like running a marathon:  All the calories he took in went to feed his respiratory and heart muscles, which were working double time to compensate for holes in his heart that sent too much blood to his lungs and not enough to his small body.

Examining Edik prior to surgery, Dr. William Novick and his volunteer team were shocked to see a total lack of  muscle or fat tissue, and wondered about his prospects for survival.  But Edik defined our expectations:  Four hours after surgery he was in his grandmother's lap eagerly feeding from a bottle.

Last month, a 9 month old Edik returned to the hospital in Kharkiv to reunite with the volunteers who saved his life. His elated mother called him  a "changed child," but the third photo says it all.

We need your support to take our volunteer surgery teams to Kyiv and Minsk in the coming months -- please click on the DONATE NOW button to help us save more children like Edik.  Consider setting up a "recurring" donation to support our work over time. And visit  the CCPI Channel on YouTube to see short videos of some of our Chernobyl Heart children.