Help fight congenital heart disease worldwide!

In April 2009, Children's HeartLink visited Jilin Heart Hospital in Changchun, China with a team of medical volunteers from New York-Presbyterian Hospital. During the mission, Children's HeartLink met Xaio Shue. The 11-year-old lived in a small village near Yushu, China. Her father and mother are farmers – they grow soybeans and corn. Her father completed middle school and her mother, elementary school; their annual income is 8,000 RMB per year ($1,500). They live with their grandfather and Xaio Shue's younger sister in a small house in the countryside.

Soon after Xaio Shue was born, her lips turned blue and she caught colds often. The family took Xaio Shue to a doctor and learned she had a heart condition. They sought help at several hospitals, but were told that the condition was not treatable, and their daughter only had four years until her health would decline. The prognosis was correct, and Xaio Shue's health did decline drastically -- so much, that she could no longer walk to school - she needed to be carried. Her father would carry her, each day, three and a half miles on foot to the village school. Then he would return to pick her up. Though she wanted to play with other children, she had a difficult time and would become frustrated.

Her parents remembered the Children's HeartLink team from New York-Presbyterian being at Jilin Heart Hospital in 2008, and when they heard on the news that the team was coming back, they began their journey to Changchun. They walked for an hour and a half to the bus station in the nearest city, Yushu. From there, it was a four-hour bus ride to Changchun. They arrived five days before the team. They waited.

When the team started echocardiographs and reviewing cases, Xaio Shue was not even on the list. Her echo was hanging on the wall and Dr. Pat Flynn, New York-Presbyterian cardiologist, noticed it was a highly unusual case. He was intrigued and asked to see the patient. Several of the planned cases fell off the schedule for various reasons and it became clear to the team that Xaio Shue was the best case to do... it was her only hope.

The successful operation (an extracardiac Fontan) was performed -- the first of its kind ever done in the entire Jilin Province. Today, Xaio Shue is healthy. Her smile in the picture, though timid, is a testament of her will. As Dr. Jonathan Chen, New York-Presbyterian surgeon, said, “Each year there's one case that the patient has hit the lottery . . . this year, it was Xaio Shue.”

Now in it's 40th year, Children's HeartLink partners with 14 hospitals in nine countries: China, India, Ukraine, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Africa, Kenya, Brazil and Ecuador.

Congenital heart disease if the world's most common birth defect, affecting one in every 100 children. Without treatment, one-third of children will die before their first birthday. Yet 90% of children born in developing countries lack access to the care they need.

Children's HeartLink partners with volunteer doctors and medical personnel from the world's leading institutions, such as Mayo Clinic, Stanford University and the Hospital for Sick Children Toronto. In order to build sustainable programs to combat congenital heart disease, Children's HeartLink works in partnership with medical communities in selected countries to help them achieve quality cardiac programs, so that more children can receive care in their own countries.