Three children seek help for heart operations

(From left) Lim Sze Hao, with his mother Yak Mong San, Aw Xin Yun,
with her mother Lim Lee Kin, and Lim Li Yu, with her grandmother
Heng Gaik Noi, need about RM50,000 each to pay for their operations. 

Six-year-old Lim Li Yu is an active girl who can't sit still for a moment. If not for her pale features and blue fingertips, she would appear like any normal child.

However, she was born with a complex heart disease and had already undergone two operations.

Now, she needs to go for a final surgery called the Fontan procedure, where blood circulating from the upper and lower parts of her body will be directed into the lungs, thus, bypassing her heart.

The cost is estimated at RM57,000.

Gleneagles Kuala Lumpur consultant paediatrician and paediatric cardiologist Dr Lim Miin Kang said this was a definitive repair procedure for her heart defect and also a method to alleviate her blueness.

Tragedy had also struck Li Yu's family when her mother died of cancer when she was just over a year old.

Now, she is being taken care of by her 73-year-old grandmother, Heng Gaik Noi.

Her father, Kian Soon, is a wireman who earns RM2,000 a month and has two other children, aged 19 and 13, to support.

Aw Xin Yun, 6, also has the same condition as Li Yu. She, too, needs a Fontan operation, estimated to cost RM50,000.

She had undergone three previous surgeries and her family had spent close to RM100,000.

Her father, Aw Sai Sai, 36, is a subcontractor who earns RM1,500 a month while her mother, Lim Lee Kin, gives tuition to supplement the family income.

"We are down to our last savings. We can only come up with RM10,000 for this operation," said Lim.

Xin Yun's operation has been scheduled for Monday.

In the case of Lim Sze Hao, 7, he needs a catheterisation and conduit surgery to close a ventricle septal defect in his heart.

The surgeries cost RM7,000 and RM45,000, respectively.

He has a hole in the heart and the blood vessel going to his lungs is not connected properly.

He not only had two previous surgeries but was also hospitalised for a week after showing symptoms of H1N1 infection a few years ago.

"Dr Lim said he should go for his operation as soon as possible," said his father, Tow Hong, 57, a part-time salesman.

Sze Hao's mother, Yak Mong San, 32, a housewife, said he was a good boy and loved going to school.

Those who wish to help these children can send cheques, with their names written at the back, made payable to The New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd to: The Cashier, Finance Department/Charity Unit, The New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd, Balai Berita, No. 31, Jalan Riong, 59100 Kuala Lumpur







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