Dear editor,
An 11-year-old little girl in Kenya who lives in a very caring village with her mother needs urgent heart surgery. A surgeon, hospital, and other humanitarians in Atlanta have volunteered to provide this surgery.
The little girl was seen by a heart surgeon in Kenya at Kenyata Hospital who confirmed that the little girl will die if she does not receive the heart surgery soon. The surgeon cannot perform the surgery in Kenya because he has a waiting time of 12 months and another child needing heart surgery would die otherwise.
The little girl's uncle is a citizen of the United States and works for Emory University. The uncle would fly to Kenya and bring the 11-year-old girl to Atlanta.
The law is that if the little girl has family ties that would prove that she would not want to stay in the United States then she should be able to get a visa to come here. However, the employee at the embassy in Kenya thinks that the little girl would want to stay in the United States after the heart surgery. The employee thinks that the little girl would want to leave her mother, to leave her friends in her wonderful village where nobody is homeless because everybody takes care of one another.
Her uncle Husein is reachable at 770-256-0586, info@sagalradio.org. I was also involved in the launch of a program ``Heart to Heart’’ which brought many children for life-saving heart surgery to the United States from Africa many years ago. It is said that American citizens who want to be humanitarian are prohibited by a person working in the U.S. embassy in Kenya who thinks that the little girl’s family ties to her mother and her friends in a caring rural village in Kenya are not strong enough for her to want to return and for her mother wanting her to return to her loving caring rural home.
I am sure that if President Obama knew the facts he would inform the employee of the Kenyan embassy that family ties and living in a loving caring rural community are more important than living in the United States and therefore nobody is breaking a law by allowing the girl to live. Nobody has to worry that the little girl and her mother want her to stay in the U.S.
Thanks for any consideration of this effort to save the little girl's life.
Neil Shulman
Doctor at Emory University in Atlanta
nshulma@emory.edu