About CHIME
Every year, there are 2.5 lakh children who are born in India with heart disease. Of these, about 40% are critical and require surgery within the first year of their lives. However, only about 10,000 children receive this life-saving treatment every year.
In Tamil Nadu alone, there are more than 50,000 children waiting for relief through surgery. Since these are mostly children from underprivileged families, they undergo years of suffering (constant illness, poor in studies, unable to concentrate on studies, weak and unable to play games, irritable, unhappy due to an unexplained discomfort), which in turn gives their parents an agonizing time.
CHIME comes to the rescue of such parents, where we take over their financial burden, spare them of debts, and garner funds for their little ones to have a good recovery and regain normal life like other children.
As of now, our relief has reached just a miniscule proportion of society. In these eight years we have reached out to over 800 children – children who would have been otherwise unable to afford these surgeries. Our success is mainly because of the goodwill and large heartedness of our patrons and well-wishers such as you, who have supported this program.
Your thoughtfulness indeed brings happiness and makes this world a better place for these children and their families. Thank you so much for your touching gesture.
WHY CHIME
Many of us may not be aware of the need for a Paediatric Cardiac Department; the need for this arises from the fact that nearly 2.5 lakh children are born with congenital heart disease every year. Of these, over 90% of the children belong to lower socioeconomic strata where unawareness, lack of information and facilities claim many lives.
This scenario prompted MIOT Hospitals to establish MIOT Centre for Children’s Cardiac Care in March 2007, headed by a group of specialists in neonatal surgery and invasive procedures. Within a month of its inception, we realized the need to reach out to children in need and to provide them care in an emergency as and when necessary.
Dr. Robert Coelho and his team started off with camps in and around Chennai, and identified children who needed immediate, urgent, emergency care. After having performed the first ten surgeries free of cost, MIOT Hospitals realized the need to ensure that more children should receive such care at all times, and we should be able to carry forward our mission to provide free heart surgeries for children for years to come.
CHIME – CHILDREN’S HEART INTERNATIONALE MIOT
In September 2007, CHIME was born. CHIME began its operation as a Charitable Trust established by MIOT Hospitals to provide funds for free heart surgeries for underprivileged children suffering from congenital and rheumatic heart diseases.
Though MIOT performs several free and subsidized surgeries, we realize that we need assistance from other sources to sustain the effort. Thus CHIME was born. CHIME has been launched to build a bridge between you and them.
Soon, CHIME organized free camps in and around South India to identify underprivileged children with congenital heart disorders and conditions, whereby they are in need of immediate or imminent heart surgeries.
CHIME organizes a Free Heart Camp at MIOT Hospitals – Chennai every year on Children’s Day, when children can walk-in and take advantage of the free check-up, investigations and perhaps even receive free treatment depending on their socio-economic status. We reach out to different districts to conduct camps to identify children, dispel fears and superstitions and pave the way to a healthy life for future generations.
