By Lilia Bacu | Project Leader
Dear friends,
I would like to start by thanking you for the continued support for Team Heart. We had a fantastic year, with lots of accomplishments. One of the greatest news in this arduous process of building a cardiac center for the people of Rwanda is that we received a land donation for the center! This was possible with the help of a hardworking team, including our Rwanda Country Director, Jeanne Umuhire. We are overjoyed and excited as this happened before our 10th anniversary trip. And yes, the 10th anniversary is just weeks away!
We are due to start the screening process on February 18th and we expect to screen nearly 250 people. This is clearly more than what we operate on, hence the passionate desire to build a cardiac center for the people of Rwanda. We start the surgeries on February 27th which will continue until March 7th followed by a period of post operative care in the step down unit. In the meanwhile we are also planned for several activities which are designed to promote sustainability of the project. We scheduled an Echocardiogram training week for the NCD nurses, and a country wide program for INR tracking. Our patients receive mostly mechanical valves which requires them to be on warfarin, however the therapeutic doses need to be optimized based on INR levels. This program will help the people who live far away from the hospitals, to have their medications adjusted to optimal levels. What a great initiative! Our yearly patient education and reunion event will also happen while the team conducts the surgical work. Currently the Kigali office is drafting a shared press release about these tremendous achievements and we hope to do a public press conference when we are all there.
The people of Rwanda are in great need, and our goal is to fulfill that by bringing sustainable projects in order to achieve the ultimate goal: building a cardiac center. Our appeal to you is to continue to support this hard working team, and help bring life saving cardiac surgery to Rwanda. Please, consider making a monthly donation to Team Heart and share the good news with your friends.
Thank you.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at liliabacu@yahoo.com.
Lilia Bacu
Team Heart Advisory Board
Global Giving Lead
https://www.globalgiving.org/ projects/team-heart/
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
