Care and surgery
Training and skills transfer
Building and equipping hospitals
Prevention and screening
Emergencies and humanitarian crises
Maternal health
France
Axes of intervention
Care and surgery
Start of mission: 1994
Since 1994, La Chaîne de l'Espoir has orchestrated the screening, transfer, reception and care in France of seriously ill children who cannot be treated in their home countries.
Background
Last-chance operations in France
1 child out of 13
dies before its 5th birthday in sub-Saharan Africa.
Difficult access to care
with one surgical team for every 1 million inhabitants in sub-Saharan Africa.
70% of the world’s population
– 5 billion people – have no access to safe, affordable surgical care.
Source: WHO
Improving access to healthcare and hospital infrastructures in the poorest countries is at the heart of La Chaîne de l’Espoir’s mission. However, for some sick children, the seriousness of their pathologies requires specific care that local teams are not yet able to provide – especially for children.
In the most critical cases, we mobilize all our expertise to transfer the sick children to France and enable them to be operated on by the best French medical teams, who volunteer their services alongside us.
Since 1994, an average of 80 children a year have benefited from our Children’s Care in France program . 95% of them have heart disease requiring open-heart surgery, and the vast majority are from sub-Saharan Africa.
These treatments are often real races against the clock, where the association has to act very quickly to save the lives of sick children.
Siamese twins saved!
Bissie and Eyenga were born Siamese twins in 2018 at a clinic in Ayos, a small town in central Cameroon. Joined at the liver and the base of the thorax, Siamese twins could not survive this way. Fortunately, both babies had the right shape to be separated. However, it was impossible to carry out this complex and delicate operation in Cameroon.
Thanks to an exceptional mobilization, the little sisters were transferred to France for life-saving surgery. They were successfully separated at the Hospices Civils de Lyon by Pr Pierre-Yves Mure and his team. Little Bissie had to undergo a second operation to treat her severe heart disease. To help them familiarize themselves with their new autonomy, a whole team was mobilized: psychologists, psychomotricians, physiotherapists…
Today, the two sisters enjoy life to the full and are in perfect health, thanks to La Chaîne de l’Espoir, an association for sick children.
Our action to save sick children in France
To care for these seriously ill children, we are mobilizing the association and its formidable chain of solidarity:
- diagnosis: by medical correspondents in the countries where we operate, with the support of healthcare professionals in France,
- decision to transfer to France: after assessment of the case by a multidisciplinary medical team,
- transfer to France: by air, accompanied by a courier, thanks to our long-standing partner Aviation sans Frontières,
- welcome at the airport: by a volunteer host family who takes care of the child throughout his or her stay,
- hospitalization and surgery: in a French university hospital,
- convalescence: with the host family, who accompanies the child to all follow-up medical appointments,
- return: thanks to Aviation sans Frontières,
- on-site medical follow-up (if required): by local medical correspondents.
“Welcoming Soa into our home for three months was a wonderful experience. She was so cheerful and courageous despite the treatment. Since her return, we’ve kept in touch by phone. What touches us most is that, thanks to the operation, she can now go to school. That’s so important for the rest of her life.
Marie-Françoise Lacroix, host family, who in 2022 welcomed Soa, a sick 4-year-old Malagasy child who underwent heart surgery at Toulouse University Hospital.
Foster families: an essential link
To give these sick children this new start in life, nothing would be possible without the commitment of the 200 host families working alongside the association for sick children. They are the ones who take care of them throughout their stay in France: from their arrival in the country to their hospitalization, convalescence and return home.
For an average of six to eight weeks, they accompany the sick child to all his medical appointments and offer him the warmth of a serene home, conducive to his recovery. “Every welcome is unique, because every child is different. In any case, it’s always a story that affects the whole family, and even those around them. Of course, it’s not a smooth ride, and you have to be prepared for that. But above all, they are wonderful moments of sharing, when we learn to live together, with respect for customs, cultures, languages…” says Claudine Moriclet, a volunteer foster carer in Nantes since 2008.
The impact of our help for sick children in France
Our Caring for Children in France program has three major consequences:
- Around a hundred children are saved every year: these children suffer from pathologies requiring operations that would be impossible in their home countries for lack of medical expertise, human, technical or financial resources (open-heart surgery, orthopedic, reconstructive, maxillofacial, visceral or ophthalmological surgery). They mainly come from African countries with fragile hospital infrastructures: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Djibouti, Guinea-Conakry, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal, Chad or Togo… ;
- Increased skills of local medical correspondents: exchanges with French medical teams via the echoes® cardiac ultrasound platform contribute to their training;
- The mobilization of a network of motivated and supportive volunteers: a local network of healthcare professionals, volunteers and host families is mobilized all over France to take action on behalf of the association for sick children.
200 volunteer host families
9 local referents
11 medical-surgical teams from partner French university hospitals
Helping isolated French children in hospital
Every year, nearly 120 children hospitalized in some 20 French establishments also benefit from our “Accompagnement des enfants hospitalisés” program.
Often hospitalized for long periods and isolated from their families (mainly due to geographical distance or family problems), they are visited several times a week by volunteers known as “parrains ou marraines soleil”, key members of the association for sick children. Their company, attentiveness and comfort will help ease their hospital stay and put them in the best possible frame of mind for their recovery.
Our partners
They support our humanitarian aid
in France
No linked partners found.
Photos: Sébastien Desarmaux / GODONG, La Chaîne de l’Espoir
