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A group of supportive Cubans launched a fundraising campaign to help Dailén, a 10-year-old girl living in Sancti Spíritus who suffers from multiple illnesses and requires medications and medical treatments that the public health system in Cuba does not provide.
Activists and members of civil society, along with Cubans living abroad, are working to raise awareness about the case of the Cuban girl, whose health condition is very fragile due to a dozen ailments for which "there are no medicines or procedures in her country."
Dailén suffers from autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease in its juvenile variety and “urgently needs a multi-organ liver and kidney transplant, a procedure that can only be obtained if she relocates to another place outside her home country, where all doors have already been closed to her,” the plea for help stated on the GoFundMe platform, organized by journalists Mariela Feal and Mairelys Valdivia.
“Dailén wants to live, but her life is fading away”, the text from the enabled account expresses, whose goal is to raise $20,000, which will be used -first and foremost- to cover the basic needs of the girl, including “a proper diet and essential care that cannot be ensured today.”
Furthermore, the aim is, in the medium term, to secure a humanitarian visa so that the girl and her family can travel to the United States, and options for treatment in Brazil, Uruguay, Spain, or Canada are also being explored, the petition states. The funds raised will cover medical expenses, transportation, and accommodation, which Dailén's family "cannot bear alone at this time."
In addition to the mentioned illness, the little girl suffers from secondary hypertension with left ventricular hypertrophy, portal hypertension, esophageal varices, erythematous-hemorrhagic gastritis, severe splenomegaly, severe iron deficiency, liver cirrhosis, splenorenal shunts, bronchial asthma, and atopic dermatitis, revealed her mother Danielly Aróstica on social media last November, when she denounced the impossibility of buying a can of milk for her daughter with her salary as a doctor.
Aróstica "is a doctor and paradoxically watches as each day her daughter's life fades, on the verge of renal failure, unable to save her", the text states on GoFundMe. The mother “has sold almost everything to raise money and take her away for treatment, but it has not been enough.”
"Dailén and her family can find hope anywhere in the world that is willing to help them; they just need money for travel, accommodation, and possible treatments, as well as to meet the child's needs, which require a special diet and care," she states.
“We know her strength; we know she is a girl with a light of hope in her eyes, who at such a young age has encountered more needles and hospital beds than the average person; who fights for her life without fully understanding the situation, while she wipes her mother’s tears, assuring her that she will be okay… and that alone is enough for us to want to help,” emphasizes the plea for assistance, which has begun to go viral on social media.
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