Seven-month-old Greta needs a heart: the difficulty of getting a child transplant

The life of Greta since four monthse reduces to a room: the ICU of Madrid’s Hospital de La Paz. But for little Greta, just seven months, already represents more than half of his life.

At only three months old, and during a vacation, the baby suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest. And since then she has remained in the hospital, plugged into a machine, where her parents try to simulate a house for her.

“I have the mobile here grabbed in case they call us while we do the interview,” he tells this chain Fernando Gomis, the girl’s father. From the hospital they have been allowed to pick her up, take her out for a walk through the hospital corridors and even allow her brother to visit her a couple of times. But there is little else they can do.

Child transplants, especially those under two years of age, They’re very difficult. Only children’s organs serve and, luckily, there is very little infant mortality in our country.

When it cannot be avoided and this pain occurs, parents, according to the National Transplant Organization, generally respond with even greater generosity than in the case of adults.: Up to 85% of families respond affirmatively.

“We attribute it to this particular capacity of empathy of the families”, emphasizes the director of the ONT, Beatriz Domínguez-Gil.

Thanks to this empathy and international cooperation, the waiting list for child transplants has been reduced from 92 to 66 children, and Greta is one of them. Meanwhile, he waits between pampering to return to the lovebirds on his sofa.