PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND

For The Love Of Falastin

In August 2002, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) sponsored two-year-old Falastin Ali to travel to Washington, D.C. for life saving heart surgery at the Children's National Medical Center. Leaving her home in the West Bank village of Khirbat Musbah, near Ramallah, Falastin came to Washington to have her little heart repaired. In association with the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, Save A Child's Heart Foundation, and Rotary Gift of Life, the PCRF arranged for Falastin's travel, accommodations in the U.S., and heart surgery at the Children’s Hospital. Falastin’s is the latest of over 300 successful operations arranged by the PCRF since its inception in 1991 that have forever changed the lives of disadvantaged Palestinian children and their families.

About a month after Falastin, the youngest of eight children, was born, her mother noticed that the baby was sneezing and coughing constantly. In the wintertime, her fingertips and lips turned blue due to poor circulation. With each passing day, her appetite was rapidly growing poorer. Karima Ali, Falastin’s mother, took the little girl to a series of doctors who were unable to identify the child’s ailment. It wasn't until Falastin was seven months old that a specialist diagnosed her with an Atrial Septal Defect, a hole in the wall separating the upper chambers of the heart. It was determined that Falastin urgently required specialized surgery not available to Palestinians locally. Typical of this defect, a tremendous amount of pressure was placed on her heart and lungs, preventing Falastin from having the normal energy levels that all children her age enjoy.

The family's options at the time seemed bleak. In addition to not having the financial resources for treating Falastin, as her father had been unemployed for over a year as a result of the Intifada, Israeli-enforced closures and checkpoints prevented access to a medical center in Tel Aviv that had the capabilities and resources to perform the surgery. Karima Ali was forced to sell all of her gold coins, worth $500 in total, to take Falastin to Jordan for treatment. Prior to learning about the PCRF through a doctor in Ramallah, Falastin’s parent had been on the verge of selling their last remaining possession, a modest two-room apartment in order to pay for the surgery that would save their baby daughter’s life.

In search of assistance, the Ali family turned to the PCRF, which arranged for Falastin’s medical treatment in Washington, secured plane tickets for her and her mother, and coordinated their stay in the U.S. with local host families and volunteers. All of these efforts were financed through private donations and through cooperation with other relief groups.

In Falastin’s case, three other organizations lent their support: the Save a Child's Heart Foundation, created by the late Amran Cohen, a Jewish-American doctor who headed the pediatric cardiac surgery department at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel; the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, which supports the Children's National Medical Center; and the Gift of Life, a Rotary Club project based in the United States.

“This is a case that is not extraordinary in the sense that there are hundreds of babies like Falastin in the West Bank and Gaza who suffer from life-threatening congenital heart disease, and do not have an opportunity for treatment due to the fact that no such centers exist in Palestine, and the Ministry of Health does not have the resources to send them abroad for treatment, nor do the families have the resources,” said PCRF President and CEO Steve Sosebee. “Because of donations, it is possible for an organization like ours, which exists on a very small budget, to be able to do the work that we're doing. We get all kinds of services, worth millions of dollars, all donated.”

Doctors at the Children’s Hospital used a brand new, minimally invasive procedure to close the hole in Falastin‘s heart. However, doctors admitted they were pushing the limits by trying this procedure on such a young child, given that she was so small and that the hole in her heart was so large -- nearly the size of a U.S. quarter in a heart only as big as a lemon. “We're not absolutely certain her defect is going to be closeable with the device,” said Dr. Michael Slack, the interventional cardiologist who cared for Falastin. “There are other things around, inside the heart, that the edges of the device could actually interfere with valves, other veins coming into the chamber.”

Yet, after three tries, the device was in place. The operation was a success and Falastin recovered exceptionally well, gaining almost three pounds in the week after her surgery and resuming the normal energy level and play schedule of a two-year-old child. Doctors said her heart will now be able to grow and develop normally.
Falastin and her mother stayed at the Ronald McDonald House, a non-profit organization that provides a home away from home for seriously ill children and their families. Individual volunteers in the Washington, D.C. area served as host families, translators, and provided transportation to and from the hospital. A birthday party was also organized in celebration of Falastin’s second birthday, which fell just one week after her successful surgery. But most importantly, this program and its volunteers helped form a crucial support system for a Palestinian family during its greatest time of need.

The U.S. media also took an active interest in Falastin's stay in the United States, and numerous newspaper articles and television news clips (including CNN, CNN International, NBC4, Fox5, and CBS9) highlighted her case, as well as the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people.