Juana is an 11-year-old girl with Down Syndrome. She lives with her mother and seven siblings in Guatemala’s rural western highlands. She is the youngest in her family, and is doted on by her mother. Juana attends a special needs school, and loves her classes and teacher. She likes to learn songs and play with her classmates.
Juana desperately needs heart surgery. She was born with a defect in one of her heart’s walls, a common disorder in children with Down Syndrome. Congenital heart diseases like this, if left untreated, can progress to severe disability and death.
Fortunately, there is an operation that can remedy this defect and save Juana’s life. She has undergone years of exams, labs, and the insertion of a cardiac catheter in order to be able to undergo this procedure. However, her family cannot afford to pay for the operation. Her mother became a widow shortly after Juana’s birth and is already scrambling to make ends meet for her eight children.
We need to raise $1,500 to fund Juana’s heart surgery on November 29. In addition to the operation itself, this fundraising goal will also cover her lab tests, hospital stay, and food and lodgings for her mother to stay with Juana at the hospital.
“I wish for my daughter to be well so that she can be a girl with many opportunities,” shares Juana’s mother. Let’s help make that dream a reality.