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From notes@igc.apc.org Fri May 10 23:13:25 1996 Received: from igc7.igc.apc.org (192.82.108.35) by MediaFilter.org with SMTP (Apple Internet Mail Server 1.0); Fri, 10 May 1996 23:13:26 -0500 Received: from cdp.igc.apc.org (cdp.igc.apc.org [192.82.108.1]) by igc7.igc.apc.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id TAA15682; Fri, 10 May 1996 19:47:22 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 19:26:57 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat"From: PeaceNet Balkans Desk Subject: Vic Ferguson's Appeal To: Recipients of zamir-chat-l Message-ID: X-Gateway: conf2mail@igc.apc.org Errors-To: owner-zamir-chat-l@igc.apc.org Precedence: bulk Lines: 134 Rezime: Ovo je ~lanak i apel pomo}i bolesna djeca koji oni zive u Sarajevu, iz jedan iz oficira sa IFORom. Summary: This is an article and appeal from Vic Ferguson, an officer with IFOR in Sarajevo who has been trying to help individual children he has found in need of medical care. Vic is being helped by Child Advocacy International, a British charity. For contact addresses, see at the end of the article, or contact Vic directly in Sarajevo at KIDS_VIC2@ZAMIR-SA.ZTN.APC.ORG -------------------------------------------------- VIC FERGUSON'S APPEAL FOR CHILDREN DYING IN BOSNIA Vic Ferguson is a NATO Warrant Officer and member of IFOR, currently serving in Sarajevo, who is trying to get together enough emergency funds to save the lives of Bosnian children. These children are suffering, and in most cases rapidly nearing death, from different causes - congenital heart disease, cancer, injuries caused by shells or mines, post-operative trauma. But what they all have in common is the potential to recover fully if their illnesses are treated with a higher standard of technology and care than Bosnia's war-devastated health service is able to offer at present. And for all of them time is running out fast. During the war a UNHCR supported programme operated an evacuation service for urgent cases. But since the end of January '96, with the implementation of the Dayton agreement, all medical evacuation programmes have been closed down. Meanwhile children continue to die painful, unnecessary deaths. Vic first met Hurmija Mujic, aged 12 (a year older than his own daughter), when her prospects were at their darkest. Paralysed from the waist down by a fragment of shrapnel which severed her spinal cord, she had given up all hope of walking and fallen into deep depression. Vic has this to say about his first visit to the paraplegic unit which had housed her for more than a year: " She had a completely lifeless expression, spoke in monosyllables, and never once looked me in the eyes when I tried to talk to her. The room stank. That night I cried myself to sleep." During his search for a way to help Hurmija, Vic met with doctors from Child Advocacy International, a non-government children's charity trying to continue with the medical evacuation of urgent cases from Bosnia. They had run out of funds and were working as volunteers, unpaid. They assessed Hurmija, and said that with rehabilitative treatment available in Engand or the U.S.A. she could be helped to walk again. But it would be expensive - and who would pay? Vic set himself the task of raising funds. After a marathon of letter-writing, persuading, begging, imploring, giving interviews to the media, using contacts in and out of IFOR (where his job is in the press information centre) to get publicity, putting a money box in the IFOR shop, asking his faraway family to help (his daughter's school did a sponsored silence for Hurmija, while countless letters and presents were sent) he raised $40 000. This was enough to provide not only Hurmija with treatment, but contributed to the care of 5 more tragic children discovered by the doctors of Child Advocacy, plus the travel and living expenses of the immediate family members needed by each child. Vic and Hurmija arrived in London last week - there Child Advocacy had found a place for Hurmija in the spinal unit of Oswestry hospital. She is settling in happily - but Vic is back at his press-centre desk in Sarajevo's Holiday Inn, worn out by his efforts to combine strenuous appeal-making with a rigorous job, and missing Hurmija badly. He now wants to repeat the success he achieved for her for the sake of other children he meets several times a week when he is paying his habitual visits to the cancer, paraplegic and immuno-compromised wards of Sarajevo's Kosevo hospital. Now he and Child Advocacy's volunteer doctors are working together - their task is to identify the children most urgently in need of help, while Vic befriends them all, and searches for money for them, and brings them what comforts he can (such as getting a friend to bring a guitar into the hospital for a sing-along of local rock songs). Child Advocacy staff have this to say about the aim of their Bosnia programme to get urgent cases treated abroad: "For countries..disadvantaged by poverty, conflict or both, local provision of specialized services is unrealistic in the short term..Children..cannot, however, be put on hold..International aid should mirror the expectations of care in advantaged countries..Every child has the right to both primary and specialist health care..this form of aid is of measurable benefit compared with so much other aid which does not reach its intended beneficiaries." (The Lancet, January 27, 1996.) The 2 most recent cases to have been highlighted by the doctors of Child Advocacy are those of M..K..,a boy of 10 with a seriously deformed heart, and L..V.., a girl of 11 with a tracheostomy tube extruding from her neck as the result of a disastrous operation, and a congenital abnormality which means she cannot open her mouth more than a centimetre. Both are permanently hospitalized, and need rapid help to give them the chance to recover and lead the normal lives which would be their birthright in a less destroyed country. When Vic met up with Armin Alagic, local co-initiator of the KIDS project to help schoolchildren in Sarajevo form e-mail links with children in the U.S.A., they both agreed to collaborate to find whatever help is possible for the sick children of Bosnia. That is how Vic has been able to find his way into cyberspace and [describe the plight of the] children he is currently trying to raise money for. The cost of treatment per child averages approximately $20 000, and can be less. Vic is looking for any kind of help or ideas for raising it for these 2 and for more children whose lives are slowly or quickly closing with preventable pain and misery. If you have any interest in what he is doing, if you would maybe like to contribute to a particular child's treatment, or know of a school, church, club, or any institution which might like to adopt a child and follow and support them through treatment and recovery, or if you have any idea for further contacts which might be useful for Vic's appeal, please call him at the following address: KIDS_VIC2@ZAMIR-SA.ZTN.APC.ORG VIC FERGUSON HOPE FOR HURMIJA APPEAL FUND, T.S.B., 58 STATION RD. CROSSGATES, LEEDS, LS15 7YJ, ACCOUNT NO 191 800 60, SORT CODE 771 407 CHILD ADVOCACY INTERNATIONAL, REGISTERED CHARITY NO. 1048781, ADDRESS: ACADEMIC DEPT. OF PAEDIATRICS, NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE HOSPITAL, UNIVERSITY OF KEELE, STOKE ON TRENT ST4 6QG. TEL +44 1782 718577 / 715444 FAX 713946(DAY) +44 1538 34569(NIGHT) CONTACT PROFESSOR DAVID SOUTHALL.