Valeria
Valeria is the third daughter of Jonathon and Mary, a young couple from La Paz, Bolivia. The family enjoys government-sponsored healthcare provided through Jonathon’s steady job as a police officer. Doctors at the Maternal Hospital in La Paz discharged Valeria three days after her birth, with no indications that she was anything but perfectly healthy. But as an experienced mother, it soon became apparent to Mary that Valeria struggled to nurse, sometimes even turning blue and struggling to breathe. She raised her concerns at Valeria’s frequent checkups, leading to a diagnosis of VSD, or ventricular septal defect. The government doctors prescribed medications to help Valeria breathe but told Mary and Jonathon there was nothing else the hospital could do for them.
As the months went by, the family grew increasingly anxious, especially when further imaging showed the baby’s heart struggling to compensate for the persistent malformation. They turned to a La Paz-based foundation, Kardiozentrum, for help to get a second medical opinion. Kardiozentrum connected them with the Cochabamba office of Puente de Solidaridad, whose social workers helped arrange for an evaluation at the private Belga heart clinic. Valeria was fast-tracked for urgent surgery to patch her heart wall on December 15. The family was relieved to take Valeria home 6 days later to celebrate her first Christmas alongside her doting sisters.
When the Puente de Solidaridad social worker called the family on January 9th, 2024, to check up on Valeria’s progress, Mary was overjoyed to report that “she doesn’t appear to have ever had surgery – she now eats perfectly well. It’s truly a drastic change.”
Valeria’s family is grateful to all those who listened to their concerns and made it possible to restore and protect her health and her future.