Just over 18 months ago I received a letter from one of my older Bolivian girls. It read as usual full of the things she had been doing, how school was going and what she had been doing at her Compassion Project. Then there was the final paragraph in which she said her family were sad as her mother was in the final stages of "chagas sickness" and wouldn't be with them for much longer.
I had been her sponsor for many years and knew her well from all the letters we share. She was one of the older children in a family of 7, her father farmed a little plot of land some distance away from where they lived. She was excelling in school and hoping with the help of Compassion she would be able to finish her schooling and pursue a university degree in medicine, her passport out of poverty along with her family. She also had an older sister with a medical issue that meant the sister needed constant care which her mother devoted her time to along with the usual things a mother does day to day. If her mother died my sponsor child would become responsible for the family including her ill sister, not only would they loose the mother they loved but also the hope for a better future.On researching "Chagas sickness" I discovered that it was a disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a potentially life-threatening illness caused by the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T. cruzi). The parasites invade the muscles of the body (via contaminated water)including the heart and lay dormant for up to years. Then they start breeding building their numbers in the muscles and the person starts to show symptoms. There are several stages of the disease and during the final stages a person usually dies of a fatal heart attack.
This all sounded terrible with not much hope but then I read on that this disease is curable at any stage in the western world by being give a course of 2 very strong antibiotics. These drugs are free under the Australian health system but coat $3,000 in Bolivia, South America. I set about finding out if there was any way we could send the drugs the mother needed from here (Aust) but that wasn't going to be possible. The only way we could help her was to raise the $3,000 and send it to Compassion Bolivia and they would organize the treatment there.I din't have $3,000 but knew there must be a way to save her. I approached my Director and then the CEO of the company I work for to see if they had any good ideas or if the company might donate some money. She suggested I could use the company resources and involve the staff to do some fund raising and that the company would also give a donation towards the costs if we raise a good amount of money.
By January we had the $3.000 and an additional $450 raised. The mothers condition was the same and hadn't worsened in the time it took us to raise the money and we were able to send her money for treatment as well as an additional $150 to three other families we knew of that were struggling. Then we had the long wait to hear if the treatment had been able to cure her and we knew it would b almost a year before we would get the formal report of how things went.
As the months went by I had little bit of news in my sponsor child's letters saying her Mom had had a treatment or that she was getting better, so we knew there was hope. Finally two weeks ago the report arrived, the treatment was 100% successful, the mother's health had been restored completely and she was now able to live a normal life and look after her family. We also received a lovely photo of my sponsor child beaming standing next to her mom who also looked healthy and happy.
We are only a small business in a small community but with the grace of God we can achieve great things when we work together. I think in life you often only get one or very few chances to do something beyond your hopes and dreams and this was one of those moments for me. I know nothing of medicine but when a small community works together you can save a life and change the future for a family.
