Niayesh was an 8-year-old girl from a remote village in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad provinces. From the very first days of her birth, her complexion was different from other children. Her lips were blue and she tired easily. Her mother said, “When she ran, she would get out of breath… We thought it was normal, she was just a child…”
But Nayyesh was not like other children. She was born with a congenital heart defect, a condition that required specialized and precise surgery. But in a family where her father was a seasonal laborer and their only income was small-scale farming, such treatment seemed like a dream.
Until the name “Chain of Hope” reached her family.
“At first, we couldn’t believe it,” says Niyaesh’s mother. “They said they could treat my daughter for free, no matter where we were from, no matter how much money we had… just because she was a child and she had the right to live.”
After initial evaluations, Niyaesh was admitted to a hospital approved by Chain of Hope. A joint team of Iranian and French doctors successfully performed the complex heart surgery.
Today, a few months after the operation, Nayesh is running again. His smile is brighter than ever and he no longer feels short of breath. He now goes to school and says he wants to be a cardiologist when he grows up, so that “kids like him don’t have to suffer.”