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Date: Fri, 10 May 1996 19:26:57 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat" 
From: PeaceNet Balkans Desk 
Subject: Vic Ferguson's Appeal
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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.