Baby Arooj

In May 2021, we started Kids Heart Surgery Referral Program for the underprivileged children of Jammu and Kashmir. It all started with an underprivileged baby girl named Arooj, the only child of her parents, from a very poor background in a far-flung village of Kashmir, J&K, who was suffering from a life-threatening congenital heart disease for whom some of my friends were collecting funds to support her surgical treatment. They approached us for the funds and realising that we can manage to get this baby operated by referring her to some higher center outside J&K. We contacted Sri Satya Sai, Sanjeevani Hospital at Palwal, Haryana, about 65km away from Delhi on main highway who accepted the baby. The baby travelled to Satya Sai along with another baby needing heart surgery in a foundation arranged private transport. On admission, both the babies were found to be COVID-positive and had to be delayed for another 10 days during which their food and stay had to be managed, as they couldn’t afford by themselves. After 10 days, baby Arooj, remained persistently covid positive delaying her surgery for another one week. At the end of third week, she was tested negative and then successfully operated, with an uneventful postoperative course of 5 days after which she was discharged home. We had to manage their food and stay for more than a month and was a testing time for our team to be part of the ups and downs that these two kids went through. The foundation arranged her transport back to her home in Kashmir. She was closely followed up by the Rehab Team of the foundation, completing her 3 cardiology follow-ups. She is living and growing up normally with normal clinical parameters.