After months of waiting, an 18-month-old Christian girl whose family fled from the Islamic State finally received a life-saving heart operation at the Hadassah's Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem.
Based on reports, Maryam Mansour, a baby who was born with a hole in her heart, was originally scheduled to fly to Turkey to get medical treatment last year but her family was forced out of their home by an ISIS attack. Narrowly escaping the arrival of ISIS in Q'araqosh, her parents were only able to take Maryam, her two brothers and a small portion of their belongings when they fled to Erbil, waiting for news of when they could safely return. Sadly, the news never came.
Lina, Maryam's mother said after having to move to a nearby city and relying on the kindness of neighbours to survive, they ran into some luck when her daughter was included in a list of refugee children in need of medical care.
Maryam's evacuation to Hadassah was facilitated by the Shevet Achim organisation, a group that specialises in helping children with cardiac problems get medical treatment in Israel.
After the operation, Professor Azaria Rein, the head of the Department of Pediatric Cardiology reported that the procedure was complicated because Maryam's heart was located on the right side of her body. This, she said, made it more difficult to address the large hole between the ventricles of her heart.
"Along the way, we even disconnected and reconnected a valve, and changed the location of the main arteries leading from the heart. All this while the heart was on the opposite side of the chest," Professor Eldad Erez, head of the hospital's Congenital Heart Surgery Department, shared.
After the surgery, Lina admitted her daughter's surgery was a nervewracking ordeal.
"I'm a little stressed because my daughter is hooked up to all sorts of machines, but the doctors told me she's all right," she said.
