Le fil de l’Espoir #18 “20 years of hope in Togo”.

Together, for them

As you read these lines, families, surgeons, doctors, midwives, nurses, kind-hearted men and women are giving their time to La Chaîne de l’Espoir. They all have a single objective, which has underpinned our action for almost thirty years: to save more and more children, while newborn babies, girls and boys still die every day in the world from pathologies that we know how to treat.

In this issue, we tell you how it all began in the late 90s in Cambodia, with our first surgical missions and open-heart operations. We rewind twenty years of action and smiles in Togo. You’ll discover our marauding missions in the underprivileged suburbs of Jaipur, India, to bring healthcare closer to the children who need it most. We also bring you news of the construction of the Sinjar French Medical Center in Iraq, long-awaited by the Yezidi community, forced into exile during long years of war and cruelly lacking access to healthcare back on their land. In Afghanistan, in an extremely difficult context, we remain mobilized to continue offering care to women and children at the French Medical Institute for Mother and Child (IMFE), overwhelmed by patients.

As the André Festoc Cardio-Pediatric Center in Mali, built by La Chaîne de l’Espoir, celebrates its fifth anniversary this September, our thoughts also turn to the family and friends of Pr Brehima Coulibaly, a brilliant Malian professor of cardiac surgery whom we met over twenty-five years ago. He died suddenly last May, and we shall miss him terribly, for he was a strong link in our great chain of solidarity.

For him, and for all the children still waiting for life-saving surgery, let’s continue to spread hope and grow our formidable chain of solidarity, link by link. Thank you so much for your support. Together, we have the power to save lives.