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News – June 2005
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Our big news this month is that Love Without Boundaries(LWB) is working hard to raised the funds to build an extension to our Beijing Home. This will be called the LWB Special Care Unit and will help us increase our ability to care for more critically ill children both short and long term and provide them with physical therapy. As most of you know we are always so desperately short of beds and this will help us greatly. Our Board has agreed to this extension but they hope that we will be able to have longer term volunteers to help us with our ever increasing patient load.
LWB has already begun raising funds and in a very short time they have already raised close to US$70,000 and are determined to achieve the total of $138,000 required to build and completely furnish the unit. If any of you have a particular interest in this and would like to support this project, please email Angela Carswell, co-director of LWB for more detailed information.
Foster Home Shun Yi, Beijing
The babies
We recently organized neurosurgery in Shanghai United Family Hospital for a total of 8 children. 7 of them received surgery by Dr T. Nguyen from UCLA who flew here for just this purpose. We are very grateful to the Shanghai United Family Hospital for allowing us to do this. From NHF we had intended to send 4 children but 2-month-old Jake Fu Chun Chao was too ill and died peacefully in our Beijing Home on June 21. Thank you to all those who prayed for him and offered their condolences at his passing. Your kind words gave us much comfort and strength to carry on caring and providing comfort for babies like Jake whose life on this earth was short. Through him we have learnt many valuable lessons on when to keep fighting and when to let go.
Fu Xiao Tian and Fu Dong Yu suffered postoperative complications and we are dealing with these in Beijing. We are very grateful toBeijing United Family Hospitalfor their tremendous help with these two babies. We have had some difficult decisions to make and their conditions remain critical. Fu Chun Yi was found to have an infection at the time of surgery and she is still being treated in Shanghai United Family Hospital.
We have a new child Daniel Zhao Xiao Bing who originates from Bao tou in Mongolia. He has severe chronic hydrocephalus. He too had surgery in Shanghai and is doing well.
We have approval for 3 more children to go overseas for surgery: Dang Zi Run (Luoyang) to Australia for craniofacial surgery; Fu Tian Hua (Jiaozuo) to Singapore for bowel surgery; and Xu Xiao Bao (Sai Qi, Fujian Province) to Singapore for genital surgery. We are working on their paperwork to complete the process.
Volunteers
We have had many groups, volunteers and visitors this month. We thank you all for coming and being part of our work here. Sick children have been cared for in hospitals, our gardens have been improved, the flower beds weeded, eternal walls have been painted and our storerooms have been spring cleaned.
Shun Yi Outreach Foster Program
This continues to run well. We have a new family and Ariel has been moved into this home. She is doing very well.
Foster Home Sai Qi, Fujian Province
Our offer to renovate the existing building has been turned down by the director Ms Xu. We continue to support the running costs of the home by sending them their child-sponsorship funds and we are still helping facilitate surgeries for the kids who need it.
We will continue with our 3-monthly visits and report back to the sponsors of the children. Ms Xu will let us know if she has other plans to relocate the children.
NHF Special Care Unit, Henan Province
The triplets have returned to their family. We have had 4 new babies admitted there and Matilda W, a student nurse from Sweden is coping exceptionally well there. Volunteer Lisa M (USA) has joined her.
One baby, Fu Dong Kang, who was sent to the unit in pretty poor physical condition, has made an excellent recovery and has put on so much weight. He was returned to the orphanage at their request, to make room for more seriously ill babies.
The total number of babies who have been cared for at the Unit since the beginning of this year now stands at 33. Only 12 have died.
Our Thanks
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We thank the Budimulia family for responding to our need to fund the roof-top garden in our Special Care Unit. The flooring and fencing has been completed. We will be adding some garden furniture, potted plants and a sun shade.
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We thank all those who responded generously to our need for preemie clothes and diapers.
- Thank you to A Mother’s Love, Love Without Boundaries and JT for sponsoring the neurosurgeries for our kids.
Our Needs
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We will be asking for sponsorship of rooms in our new extension. Sponsors get to name the rooms, honouring their loved ones or whatever they choose. The funds will help cover the internal fittings for the rooms such as flooring, lighting, painting, window dressings etc. The prices vary according to the floor size of the rooms per square meter. This has been a popular way to enable individuals, companies, groups to be involved and acknowledged for their contribution to the care of the children. The floor plans will be up on our website in the next few weeks but if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email us.
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We will need some funds to pay for the airfares for the 2 children who will be having surgery in Singapore. The Foundation in Singapore has also asked if some funds can be donated towards Fu Tian Hua’s surgery. She will need two surgeries, 3 months apart. We are hoping to raise about US$3000-$4000 for these needs.
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We are looking for a foster family in Adelaide, Australia who would be willing to care for 3-year-old Dang Zi Run for about 4 weeks in November after his surgery.
- We have many medical needs, some quite specific. Below is a list of our current needs:
- Pap pads (blue disposable sheets, plastic film on one side, absorbent on the other)
- Disposable gloves (sizes 6½ through to 8), sterile and non sterile. We also are in need of latex- free, sterile gloves especially to use for babies with open spinal wounds.
- Angio-catheters (sterile sheathed needles) of length at least 45mm.
- Sterile dressing packs or suture packs.
- Vitamin K (Intramuscular preparation).
- Gentamycin Sulphate (intramuscular preparation, paediatric doses).
- Rocephine (Ceftriaxone) intramuscular preparation, paediatric doses.
- If you have orthopaedic surgeons/physical therapists willing to donate old external rotation splints for babies with clubbed feet, these would be very useful, especially the adjustable ones where we can change the angle and the size of the shoes on the bar when the kids grow.
- Sterile gauze, any size.
- This is a tough one but I will put it on the list anyway… external ventriculostomy drain sets (needs a willing neurosurgeon or pharmaceutical company to help with this).
With gratitude,
Robin and Joyce Hill.
“Success is not measured by what you accomplish but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”
– Orison Swett Marden
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