By Bob Johnson, secretary, Burton-Middlefield Rotary
I had the honor of traveling to the Ronald McDonald House in Akron with Gift of Life (GOL) Northeast Ohio president Ken Fogle and his wife, Janet, this past Aug. 28. Six-year-old Nash from Haiti had just received open-heart surgery. Prior to the surgery, Nash was unable to walk more than a few steps before he had to sit and catch his breath. His defective heart was getting weaker by the day, and his mother and brothers were forced to watch him face a short and painful life. Thanks to Gift of Life International and Gift of Life Northeast Ohio (GOL-NEO), Nash and his mother traveled, at no cost, to Akron Children’s Hospital for his life-saving surgery.
In 2017, Rotary and the Burton-Middlefield Club, with the help of 19 partners, established a $110,000 grant for the purchase of equipment to set up the Gift of Life pediatric intensive care unit at St. Damien’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince. I made a trip to Haiti in 2019 with Ken to visit the GOL surgical team in St. Damien’s new pediatric intensive care unit. The first Haiti pediatric surgeries were being done then, and hundreds of life-saving surgeries have been performed at St. Damien’s since. Current government instability has restricted surgeries at St. Damien’s, forcing Nash to go to Akron Children’s for his procedure. Five days after surgery, Nash was riding a Big Wheels bike (the first he had ever seen) and playing like a normal six-year-old boy on the Ronald McDonald House playground. Since Haiti is a Creole French-speaking country, through an interpreter, we heard the overwhelming gratitude of his mother for the gift of her son’s life and Nash’s first English words: “Thank you very much.”
My trip to Haiti was one of the most impactful of my life, as I saw children who previously faced a sad future being treated and released as normal kids. Their parents spoke no English but showed how they felt through the universal language of smiles, hugs, and tears of joy. Haiti is just one of the places GOL has set up clinics and sent teams of specialist doctors to do surgeries. They are currently very active in Egypt with a larger surgical unit.
Future plans are underway to establish an intensive care facility in Ghana. This effort will coordinate with the work of the Rotary Club of Burton-Middlefield at the Bill Barnes Pharmacy in a hospital in rural Ghana. Our club has supported this facility since the 1970s so it could grow and serve its rural community. We look forward to working with Gift of Life and Gift of Life Northeast Ohio on this project. Rotary continues to be a worldwide leader in humanitarian work around the globe and collaborates often with like-minded groups like Gift of Life. Rotary is in the final phases of its efforts to eradicate polio in the world in conjunction with UNICEF and the World Health Organization. How great it feels to be even a small part of these efforts.
