Every year, 52,000 children are born with CDH. In Higher-Income Countries, 50% of these babies survive. In Lower-to-Middle-Income Countries, less than 1% survive their first week of life. Help CDH International give these children a fighting chance.
Make a one-time donation.
- CDH International has a 9% overhead. This means that 91 cents of every dollars goes directly to fight CDH.
- CDH International works diligently to help over 6500 member families in 74 countries on an annal budget of just $250,000.
- CDH International is registered in 7 countries to better fight for these babies globally
- CDH International undergos annual voluntary financial audits to show our commitment to transparency
- CDH International shares not only annual financial statements, but our full 990 annual tax forms as well
Make an automated recurring pledge to help fight Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia.
Our Family’s Battle Against Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia
Featured patient of the week is Reagan Gallegos. Reagan is the daughter of Zach and Shelby Gallegos and is currently in the trenches of her CDH journey. Reagan is a fighter and will be celebrating her 6 month birthday this week. She was born at Johns Hopkins in MD, but recently was transferred to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) where her care team are constantly evaluating her treatment to prepare her for open heart surgery. Zach had this to share with CDH International:
“In September of 2020, after our 20 week appointment, we found out that our daughter, Reagan, has CDH. We were referred to John’s Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD to verify the diagnosis as well to start her treatment. She underwent the FETO procedure in November and was born at the end of December 2020.
Reagan was born on December 23, 2020 and was repaired on December 27th. The surgery was a success and she thrived in the NICU. In March, her pulmonary hypertension flared up and she was intubated and moved to the PICU where they determined that she needed to have her ASD and VSD in her heart repaired.
As of writing this, on June 21, 2021, we are currently at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and Reagan will be having her ASD and VSD repair on June 22nd. If all goes well, the doctors will be able to focus on getting her extubated again and working on fixing the pulmonary hypertension so that we can take a baby home.”
Zach also shared with us that, “Reagan was born with a hole in her diaphragm on the left. Coupled with her CDH, she also has CHD (2 holes in her heart), and pulmonary hypertension. Reagan also is missing the nails on both of her pinky’s. While she was extubated (after only 1 week from birth), she never really cried but “whined” like Walugi (a character from the Mario games, look it up its funny). She quickly became the most popular baby while we were at John’s Hopkins.”
CDH occurs in approximately 1 in 2500 births, with over 1600 babies diagnosed each year in the United States alone. There is currently no known cause, but studies have suggested that it is likely due to a number of genetic and environmental factors.
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