Dear Friends,
Over 10,000 babies are born each year in Kenya with a congenital heart defect, yet the country has no dedicated congenital heart program to treat these children. Lacking access to modern medical cardiac care, many of these children fail to live past their early childhood years. In addition, a significant number of children and young people in Kenya and East Africa suffer from heart disease due to poor living conditions. Bacteria found in untreated water can lead to rheumatic fever, which often results in damage to heart valves. Children with rheumatic heart disease cannot run and play like healthy children. They need heart surgery to be able to live like other children.
According to Dr. Hani Hennein, a member of the THAP-USA Board of Directors, "Between Cairo to the North and Johannesburg to the South, there is no congenital heart program in all of Africa. Lacking the access to modern medical care, many of these children die in their early childhood years." That is why THAP’s efforts to bring medical mission teams, equipment, and supplies to help build the medical care capacity in Kenya are so critical.
I know from my own personal experience in the early 1990s what our families are going through when my daughter, Veronica, was diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease. With limited facilities available in my country, I took her to India because there we could find the hospitals and facilities we needed. The surgery went well but my daughter passed away due to kidney failure.
For many months after I returned to Kenya, I agonized about my daughter’s death while continuing my work as a safari tour guide. My strong faith in God helped me pull through this period as her death became a significant turning point in my life. Since then God has worked through my personal life and changed every aspect of it.
He gave me the vision to help other families who were going through what my family had experienced and so, the Take Heart Association Project was created in the early 1990s in Kenya and established as a nonprofit organization in the U.S. in 2002. Our mission is to help provide life-saving surgery, support, and resources to families of underprivileged children who are suffering from heart defects and heart disease. Take Heart has grown from small beginnings to one that is now touching lives around the world. We are called to live as ambassadors for Christ here and now in our everyday lives.
What a joy it has been these many years to see people dedicating their lives to helping these suffering children. We offer the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of the children and families we assist.
We are grateful to our donors, funders, partners, and board members for helping THAP give hope to families with little or no resources, that their child’s life, which would otherwise have been lost, can now be restored. THAP helps these families by providing vital emotional support as well as critical financial support for pre- and post-operative diagnostic tests and medications followed by surgery.
By visiting our website, you see specific examples of how our Hearts for Kids Program is making a difference. I hope you will choose to support us by:
- Making a contribution to support our mission
- Promoting our work to others who might be interested in assisting these children
- Partnering with our program by providing necessary equipment, facilities, and support for our families
And, most importantly, we ask that you pray for our continued success in changing the lives for the better of these children suffering with heart disease.
God bless you and your family,
Peter Mbogo Kamau
Executive Director
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Peter, THAP supporter, Bill Parkinson, THAP-Kenya Board member, Priten Patel, and THAP-USA Board member, Alan Rossiter, meeting in Nairobi. |
A Tribute to Dr. Hani Hennein
All of us at Take Heart Association Project (THAP) were deeply saddened by the sudden and tragic death of Dr. Hennein in July 2010. We first came to know him when he operated on a young boy, Victor, in 2005 who was in need of complex heart surgery at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio where he worked. From that time, he determined that he could help more Kenyan children by bringing medical mission teams to Nairobi. In 2006 with the aid of Peter Mbogo Kamau, Dr. Hennein formed a partnership with The Mater Hospital to help build its cardiac program over the next five years. He also joined the THAP-USA Board of Directors.
His last medical mission to Mater Hospital was in March 2010 with plans to return in the fall to take care of several cases that there was not sufficient time to handle in March. At the farewell party held for him and his team after the March mission, he remarked that "the Mater Heart Program had reached full maturity." In a sense the dream he had in 2005 had been realized.
Dr. Hennein's legacy will not die, it will continue as part of THAP's mission of helping needy children with heart problems.
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Peter and Dr. Hani. |