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A little Peruvian girl with a damaged heart gets help

UPDATE: EsSalud, the national health care network of Peru, has reportedly made a last-minute decision to assume the remaining cost for 5-year-old Valeria Vásquez‘s heart transplant.

According to an email newsletter sent out by her school, Jean Piaget, Valeria is being flown tonight with her father, Diego, aboard a charter ambulance plane on a 10-hour journey to the university hospital in Minnesota.

Donations are no less important, however, since her treatment is expected to last at least six months to a year, and her family needs all the financial help it can get to cover travel and living expenses during her care. The first procedure will be to hook her up to an artificial heart to help stabilize her other organs. Then she must wait for a compatible donor heart.

By Rick Vecchio
Peruvian Times Editor

Only a heart transplant can save five-year-old Valeria Vásquez. Her parents, Diego and Jesicca, need to raise more than US$550,000 for her to receive the operation in the United States.

Their story aired last weekend on the Sunday night TV news magazine Panorama.

Peruvians responded with an outpouring of donations: More than US$200,000 in Peru and nearly US$24,000 in the United States.

But anticipated transplant-related expenses are expected to total US$775,000 — the sum Diego and Jesicca must raise before they can travel with Valeria to the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital.

Full disclosure: I have known Valeria since she was toddler. She has been my little girl’s best friend since they were both two years old. She is a smart, vivacious, graceful, funny little girl.

It was last November on a Friday that Valeria first showed signs of illness. She developed a high fever and had trouble breathing; Her body ached and she was nauseous — all symptoms easily chalked up to a common flu. But by Sunday, her parents, both physicians, knew something much more serious had afflicted their daughter. They checked her into the hospital.

The initial diagnosis was a virus, probably long dormant, in her heart. For days she remained in pediatric intensive care, and pulled through. She was able to attend graduation at her pre-school in December, and go on a few play dates with her friends. But her condition did not improve. It got worse.

Then came the devastating news: The virus had caused permanent damage to her heart, a condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy, in which the heart becomes weakened and enlarged and cannot pump blood efficiently.

Diego and Jesicca are desperately hoping to raise the money before Valeria’s decreased heart function damages her liver,  lungs and other body systems.

If you want to help them, you can make your donation to:

In Peru:
Banco Interbank (In the name of Valeria’s uncle, Bruno Vásquez de Bracamonte)
En soles: 288-3038206265 (cuenta interbancaria 003-288-013038206265-86)
En dólares: 288-3038206299 (cuenta interbancaria 003-288-013038206299-85)

Or online, with a credit card, through the the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) :
http://cota.donorpages.com/PatientOnlineDonation/COTAforValeriaV/

 

Interview with filmmaker Michael Kleiman, director of “Web”

Web is an upcoming full-length documentary directed by Michael Kleiman, a young and talented filmmaker from New York who embarked on a personal journey to capture the moment when a group of children in a remote corner of Peru’s Amazon jungle interact with the Internet for the first time.

Consulting some of the leading minds in the Internet world, Kleiman explores profound questions about technology, interdependence, and the deep human connections that bind us all.

The film follows the work of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) — an organization that produces network-based laptops for distribution to children in the poorest areas of the world. One of those locations was Palestina, Peru.

“It’s a little ironic that they have the information superhighway before they have a highway,” Kleiman says in this podcast interview with Peruvian Times:

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Peruvian Times Podcasts sponsored by Fertur Peru Travel and El Sol Language School.
Click here to read about their new Spanish Cultural Immersion program

Read more…

Peru celebrates UNESCO inscription of Danza de Tijeras and other Andean ritual dance

Peru is celebrating this week after UNESCO inscribed two ritual dances in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritiage of Humanity.

On Wednesday, UNESCO announced that the scissors dance, a traditional competitive dance from Quechua villages in Peru’s south-central highlands, and Huaconada, a festival dance from the central Andes, met the criteria for worldwide notice.

“We are a country of talented people and I’m very happy that our friends, the scissors dancers, have this recognition,” state news agency Andina reported musicians Bartola and Marco Romero as saying.

“We hope that in the coming years other cultural expressions from Peru receive a similar seat of honor,” said Peru’s Culture Minister Juan Ossio.

Scissors dancers hold in their right hand iron rods, which represents scissors blades. The dancer, which wears a multicolored outfit, forms a team with a violinist and a harpist that represents their village or community. Read more…

Lori Berenson interview with Peruvian Times

Lori Berenson met Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, with Peruvian Times Managing Editor Rick Vecchio and veteran freelance journalist Lucien Chauvin.

The meeting came two hours after Berenson had spoken before a judicial tribunal deciding whether to rescind her parole, threatening to send her back to prison to serve out the remaining five years of a 20-year sentence for  collaboration with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

For more than an hour Berenson answered questions in English and Spanish, on the condition that her statements would remain Off The Record until and if she was ordered  to return to prison. That order came two days later.

Here is the seven-part interview in English.

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