Birendra – Hole in Heart
Birendra’s father and mother were very young, and very poor, even by Nepali standards. They lived with their two children – Birendra and his young sister – in Lower Humla, an area of intense Maoist activity. Birendra’s Mum used to eat dirt to satiate her hunger while she was in the fields working. She was very weak from malnutrition, and while leaving the fields one day, she fell off a cliff to her death. The father, desperate and afraid of being abducted by the Maoists, left Humla and came to Nepalgange (a city on the Indian border) with a newly born daughter of 3 months, and Birendra who is 4 years old. In Nepalgange he met a man who was running a children’s home in Kathmandu, who told him that he would take Birendra into his ‘orphanage’ and look after him, for a fee.
There were already 24 children at this ‘orphanage’, who were being supported by The ISIS Foundation. Before we became involved, they were being kept in appalling conditions – they had scabies, lice, were not going to school, and were being sent out to beg in the streets. They were persistently hungry. We had instructed, as a condition of our support, that no further children were to be brought into the home. But the opportunistic manager of the home hid five additional children in the attic, bringing them out at night to eat, so that he could collect fees from their parents. Birendra was one of these children.
When we finally found him, little Birendra was terribly ill. He was sickly with chest infections and in constant pain. In taking him to doctors, we discovered that he had a very large hole in his heart, limiting his oxygen intake and depleting his immune system. After days of tests at the Galanga Heart Hospital, we were advised that Birendra would need immediate surgery to repair the hole, even though it was an extremely high risk procedure.
The risk to Birendra was that he may not come out of the surgery. However if we did nothing, he would live perhaps to 10 years old, with his health deteriorating monthly, dying a painful death. We decided to support the surgery after discussing his situation with a leading pediatric heart specialist in the US, who looked at all the test results and agreed with the diagnosis. As is Nepali custom, we also found three people with type B blood to take with us to the hospital, to donate blood for Birendra the day of the surgery.
On December 1st 2005, Birendra underwent heart surgery. It was a day where we all held our breath, worrying about how he would cope, and about whether he would come out of the anaesthetic. To our joy, he came through with flying colours, and we have now organized for him to live for the next three months in a clean and protected environment, so that there is no impact to his heart from playing or being active. Hopefully he will pull through this recovery period, and we can then support him back into school, and provide food, medical care, and love on an ongoing basis.
