Fredelin is a five-month-old baby boy living in Haiti. His mother is a student who works as a street vendor in her spare time. Her family members are small-scale farmers in the rural countryside. A few days after Fredelin was born, his mom noticed that his head was abnormally large. Fredelin often had the flu, and vomited and cried a lot. Fredelin’s mom took him to the local hospital, and doctors there sent them to the hospital in the capital, Port-Au-Prince.
Doctors in Port-Au-Prince performed a CT scan and diagnosed Fredelin with hydrocephalus. His skull contains a buildup of excess cerebrospinal fluid. This buildup places extra pressure on the nerves and blood vessels in his brain, and he is at increased risk of stroke or vision loss.
Fredelin’s mom says, “I feel bad because Fredelin is my first child. I can’t see him suffer and I am not ready to confront these problems. It’s too much for me. I am always thinking about this situation because I am all alone. His father doesn’t want to help me with [this] because he said the baby could not survive and I often cry a lot.”
For $1,260, Fredelin will receive surgery to drain the excess fluid from her skull and bypass it to another part of her body. She will be at considerably less risk of paralysis or nerve damage. Let’s work together to improve Fredelin’s quality of life and ease her mom’s worries.