Three-year-old Rea from Kosovo is the 40,000th child to have their heart healed through our global network of caring since 1975.
Rea has an older sister named Tea who is five. Rea and Tea live with their parents in Gjilan, Kosovo. Rea is especially close to her grandfather. This past June, Rea was diagnosed with a heart defect. Her family was devastated. Her father said he was not able to think about anything else other than the fact that his daughter was ill and needed help. Currently, there is no access to pediatric cardiac care in Kosovo.
When Rea was diagnosed by the local cardiologist in June 2021, she was fortunate that Gift of Life had a training visit scheduled for September of 2021. Rea was put on the list to be screened for care during that visit.
Rea was selected as one of the ten surgical candidates scheduled for this visit and was the first child operated on. Thankfully she responded well to the procedure and was able to go home within 7 days with a healed heart.
You can hear directly from her father about the care we provided.
