Rotary’s Belize Children Project Continues Transforming Lives  

For more than five decades, a quiet but powerful partnership has been changing the lives of Belizean children born with orthopedic conditions, offering hope where families often feel helpless. Today, Rotary’s Belize Children’s Project made its Belize City stop at Belize Healthcare Partners with many parents taking their children for life altering care. News Five’s Shane Williams has the story.

 

Shane Williams Reporting

For a parent or guardian, few things are more distressing than knowing something may be wrong with a child and not knowing where to turn. For Indeera Flowers, that fear began when her daughter Kideera was just ten months old and got progressively worse, but she found hope in Rotary’s Belize Children’s Project.

 

Indeera Flowers, Mother

“When she was 10 months old, we first started seeing the bone in her legs and then. When she was three years old, she wasn’t growing out of it. So we took her to the doctor. From the doctor. He said that, okay, from X-rays and different things, he said that we had bloods disease, so he had to take, well, we had to take surgery and that was when we started looking into options to take surgery and different things. And then he told us about Rotary and then we got in contact with them and set up everything.”

 

Rotary’s Belize Children’s Project has helped over five Belizean children like Kideera over the years, children with growth disorders that, if untreated, can lead to lifelong pain and disability. Rotary mobilized an international network of care. Through the Rotary Club of Southern Illinois and Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis, everything is arranged.

 

Charlene Brennan, US Director, Belize Children’s Project

“We can coordinate their air travel. We meet them at the airport. If they’re going to a host family, we make sure that they get to the host family. We accompany them at all of their appointments in the hospital. We attend their surgeries. We support the host families or the parent, if there is a parent that has the financial resources to come and accompany, we will also help support them with whatever facilitating that they would need. We do coordinating for housing for them and basically just make sure that they are taken care of while they’re in the us.”

 

For orthopedic surgeon Dr. Coles L’Hommedieu, this mission has become deeply personal. He has traveled to Belize almost every year for seventeen years, volunteering his time and expertise.

 

Dr. Coles L’Hommedieu, Orthopedic Surgeon

“It’s life altering. I’ve been doing it for a long, long time. I got into the program probably close to twenty years ago. One of the patients in the program had gotten too old to go to the hospital, so I did some hip surgery on her. And then they asked me to join the program and come each year and help out clinically. And so you know, the program’s been around a lot longer than I have. But over time we’ve helped over five hundred children. And this year we have already over ten kids that will likely go back for surgery to get better with the multitude of problems. It’s been life changing. I mean, I love the country. I love the people here. I come back for that reason. It feels good to help out. But you know, the bigger picture is I’m here to do good for the people of Belize above everything else. And I, I keep coming back because I love it. I love the country and, and I love the people and everything about the place.”

 

Behind the scenes, host families open their homes and hearts. Kevin Sadle and his wife have been hosting Belizean children for more than a decade, witnessing transformations they say never get old.

 

Kevin Sadle, Host Parent

“When we first had our first little girl, she was six years old and came to us. And it was something that we couldn’t imagine. You know, a mother gave giving up her daughter to come to the states to have surgery with and stay with somebody that she had no idea who they were. They trusted the whole process. And so, she came up twice and lived with us for about three to four months each time with the back surgery that she had. And it was really rewarding because last Wednesday we had dinner with her and her mom, and now she’s 16 years old and she’s no longer in in need of the program. She walks straight and can do everything healthy. It’s just such, so rewarding to see the life-changing surgeries that this program provides.”

 

Here in Belize, the project depends on strong local partners. The Rotary Club of Belmopan organizes the clinics at different healthcare facilities across the country, and in Belize City, Belize Healthcare Partners provides its facility free of cost, ensuring children from across the country can access care.

 

Ishmael Quirroz, Past President Rotary Club of Belmopan

“It’s a collaboration. It’s where we bring down a specialist in pediatric orthopedic down from the states to do annual clinics where we invite everybody. Anybody who has a child, who has any bone abnormality, any issues such as scoliosis, club feet, knock knees, anything related to bones, we invite them to come out and get a free diagnostic assessment. And so after that assessment, if they are adequate and eligible to enter our program, our commitment is to provide them free medical care and treatment up to the age of eighteen.”

 

Eden Jones, Patient Experience Manager, Belize Healthcare Partners.

“It has been truly wonderful to see the children and their happy faces, to see the children returning. You know they are excited to see the doctors and it’s very encouraging to hear their stories and to see how far they have come. On behalf of Belize Healthcare Partners, we are truly honoured to be a part of this initiative. Children are the foundation of our nation’s future and investing in their health is investing in Belize itself.”

 

Like hundreds of other children who have benefitted from the program, today, Kideera’s life looks very different. She runs. She plays. She excels in school. Her mother says sometimes she cries, not from fear but from joy.

 

Indeera Flowers

“I would have to say some days I cried from seeing the transformation that happened. It has been amazing to see her from those bow legs to now up straight and tall and can walk and run and do everything, you know, like a normal child. It has been like the world for me because I’ve always wanted to see her get like that and to see that we had the opportunity of doing so it has been the most wonderful feeling.”

 

Ten other children have already been selected this year for treatment at Shriner’s Hospital. Shane Williams for News Five.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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