“A very shy and beautiful girl,” is how our medical partner, African Mission Healthcare Foundation (AMHF), describes Maryann, a three-year-old from Kenya. While speaking with AMHF, “Maryann kept smiling and stealing glances.”
AMHF tells us, “Maryann’s father works on farms and construction sites while her mother washes clothes for people to earn a living.” Maryann has a six-year-old brother, and both children have had painful umbilical hernias.
Umbilical hernias occur when the opening for the umbilical cord does not completely close, allowing fatty tissue or part of the bowels to protrude.
AMHF says, “Maryann experiences severe sporadic stomach pain, and if the surgery is not done soon, she will continue experiencing pain and risks having her intestines strangulated – which would lead to a much more complicated mode of treatment.”
AMHF reports, “Early this year, friends and family came together to raise the funds for her brother’s treatment; since then, her parents have been trying to raise the money needed for Maryann’s treatment, but they have not been able to.”
$430 will fund Maryann’s surgery—a procedure that will push the bulge on her abdomen back into place, and to make her abdominal wall stronger.
Maryann’s mother shares, “All I ask for my daughter is to no longer be in pain, I wish I could taker her pain away; when she cries asking me to make it stop, it breaks my heart because I am not able to do anything.”
We can help take Maryann’s pain away– let’s do it.