Minister promises help for little Adiah

Health Minister Fuad Khan has promised to assist one-year-old Adiah Mya Despot who needs to go abroad for surgery to remove a hemangioma vascular tumour on her face. Khan met with  little Adiah and her mother Stacy Despot at his Port-of -Spain office on Friday, a day after reading about the child’s condition in the T&T Guardian. The tumour has covered the baby’s bottom lip and chin and is now growing inside the mouth. In an interview at the Point Fortin District Hospital on Saturday, Khan said: “I saw her yesterday (Friday) and I called the chairman of the Children’s Life Fund to send her there for accessing of the funds. “I was unaware of it until I read it in the newspapers,” he said. “I called them in and I saw the baby...It is a pretty big hemangioma.”

He said the baby would need re-constructive surgery of the lips and mouth since the tumour had taken over that area. “It needs a lot of specialised care that she has to go abroad for,” Khan said. “We are looking at it but what we do need is some form of quotation...I put her on to a group that works for children.” Asked about the status of the Children’s Life Fund, he said it had now been activated and would be officially launched when Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar returned to the country.

He said the fund had been using money from Medical Aid, but they now had a board, a chief executive officer and an account for the Life Fund. Despot, a single parent, complained that her daughter’s condition was worsening and she had hit dead ends wherever she turned for help. She said when her daughter was three weeks old, she noticed a red spot on her lip that spread to her chin and had now become a hideous and painful growth. The family is hosting a fund-raiser in the form of a musical concert and barbecue at Festival Square, Point Fortin, on November 18.

For further information call 757-1815. Anyone willing to assist can also make deposits to account #110000001217351 at RBC Royal Bank.