Congenital Heart Awareness – Saving lives in Iraq

Today’s guest post comes to us from half-way around the world.  Preemptive Love Coalition is a team of champions who live and work in Iraq, striving to eradicate the backlog of Iraqi children waiting in line for lifesaving heart surgery in pursuit of peace between to communities at odds. 

1 in 10.

That’s how many children are now reportedly born with a heart defect in some Iraqi cities.

Combine this high CHD rate with Iraq’s near total lack of pediatric cardiac surgical teams, and you’ve got a backlog of thousands of families who are stuck.

Thousands of families. No doctors. No options.

Preemptive Love Coalition exists to provide lifesaving surgeries for these children in pursuit of peace. Our team lives in Iraq, moving and working among the families we seek to serve.

By hosting lifesaving “Remedy Missions” inside the country we’re able to train the local doctors and nurses while saving lives. Each mission creates more CHD survivors, more parents who can rest at ease and more communities that can celebrate a hopeless situation made right.

And for many in the Coalition, CHD is a very personal issue. Either they lived through it or a loved one did, and their stories encourage us. They remind us that this problem in Iraq—something we’ve dubbed The Backlog—can be beaten!

This month, we are inviting you, CHD survivors around the world, to share what you’ve been through—we want to celebrate your survival!

To do that, we’re offering a free copy of our book to anyone who has ever had a heart defect. If you have a heart defect, simply email us your address or leave a comment below and we’ll mail you a copy. If you know someone else who has one, forward this post to them and we’d love to send them a book, too.

We’ve spent years celebrating lives saved here in Iraq—now let us celebrate lives saved where you live!

Matthew Willingham works as the Communication Director for Preemptive Love Coalition, an Iraqi-based development organization providing lifesaving heart surgeries for Iraqi children in pursuit of peace. Read Preemptive Love’s on-the-ground stories on Twitter and Facebook, or grab a free copy of their new book here.