4-year Old Girl Travels from Palestine to Kyiv for Complex Cardiac Surgery
Masha Abu Rumaila is four and a half years old. She was born in Makeyevka, Donetsk region. At birth, she was diagnosed with a critical congenital heart disease, the functionally single ventricle. In order to save the child’s life with such a disease, it was necessary to carry out three cardiac surgeries. The first two surgeries, upon birth and 4 months thereafter, were conducted by the cardiac surgeon Igor Mokrik, (today he is the head of the Department of Acquired Heart Failure at the Heart Institute, Kyiv) at the Department of Children’s Cardiac Surgery at the Institute of Emergency and Restorative Surgery named after V. Husak, Donetsk.
When the war in the Donbass began, Masha and her family moved to Palestine, where her father came from. There she was under the supervision of doctors from a children’s cardiac surgery clinic in Jerusalem. When it was time to do the third, final and most complicated Fontan procedure, the parents decided to turn again to the same doctor and to operate at the Herat Institute, Kyiv.
The surgery was successfully completed on August 8. The happy family returned home.
Cardiac surgeon Igor Mokrik says, ‘Treatment of children with severe congenital heart disease requires long, often many years of effort. Several surgeries starting in the newborn period, intensive care in resuscitation, patronage and treatment in the inter-operative period… In this chain, each link has a huge impact on the final result. The fact that Masha returns to Palestine after a successful Fontan procedure in Ukraine is a success of the joint efforts of not one dozen specialists from Donetsk, Palestine, and Kiev. On their behalf, I wish Masha and her family peace and all the best.’