PAL Foundation saving lives

LOVELY is a six-year old girl but she is as tiny as a one year-old baby. Her mother pushes her around in a small wheel chair as she cannot walk nor sit by herself in a regular chair. She was born with no hands and feet—just stubs at the end of her extremities. Her eyes are just slits and you can hardly see her eyeball, and she cannot open her mouth wide enough for a spoon to enter. So she has been sipping her food (blended rice and vegetables) ever since she was an infant and that is why she is so tiny and malnourished. To top it all, she cannot talk because she cannot open her mouth. Her mother says she was only two months pregnant when she had severe infections. She was given massive doses of antibiotics which could have resulted in the multiple disabilities of Lovely.

Lovely was scheduled to leave for Australia last December for surgery—beginning with her mouth, and on to the other defective parts of her body. It has taken almost a year since arrangements began for her to travel, with so many medical check-ups, searching for a hospital that will perform the surgeries, and a foster family that would host her and her mom for several months. All these were possible because of the services of Philippine Airlines Foundation. Lovely and her mom stayed in Welcome House, a crisis shelter for girls and women run by the Good Shepherd Sisters until they were able to leave for Sydney. The host family of Lovely in Australia kept us updated. Although the medical assessment was that Lovely could not be operated on till she reached 14 years old, when she would stop growing, so as not to have her undergo repeat surgeries as she was growing, she was given a lot of other medical attention and advices on how to develop her, feed her so she does not become malnourished, and how to avoid infections. Lovely and her mom returned to the Philippines (to Welcome House) last January, looking healthier and there was certainly a glow in her eyes.

Lovely is not the first child that PAL Foundation has helped to secure such services. Menchu Aguino Sarmiento, the Executive Director since 1999, has assisted dozens of children to have a second chance in life because of her persistence and generosity.

The PAL Foundation was established in 1992, in the aftermath of the Mt. Pinatubo disaster. It received an annual grant of PhP1,000,000 from Philippine Airlines, which it used to give small cash grants for selected projects such as providing water pumps in one barrio in Quezon Province, for micro-finance, and community development.

The PAL Medical Travel and Cargo Grants program benefit charity patients and support medical mission teams. In the past, there had been a ceiling of P100,000 on the worth of tickets or cargo the Foundation could give to a surgical mission team. But the Board realized that the value of the surgeries for impoverished Filipinos in remote areas justified sponsoring entire surgical teams with discounts or free excess baggage for their equipment and supplies. The more complex individual patients are given grants to go to Manila or even abroad should they be so fortunate as to have been accepted for free care elsewhere. In corresponding with the other charities abroad which were giving free care to Filipino children, Menchu developed a network, so that the PAL Foundation has been facilitating the referral and acceptance of patients to Mending Kids International and certain Rotary International Gift of Life programs. She helps these foreign charities evaluate whether a child should go there with a parent or whether the child can just get care here.

But most of the PAL Medical Travel Grantees (especially the adults) go to Manila hospitals. It is hard to get Filipino families in Manila interested in hosting these indigents. Fortunately though, Welcome House in Paco and the Queen of Peace Transient Patient Home in Quezon City shelter the patients though they must still pay for their food and other needs. The number of charity patients of all ages varies in any given year. They are proud to say that they have assisted several conjoint twins (Siamese twins) undergo surgery in the US for separation.

The PAL Foundation has also been giving free cargo for relief goods. Donations run into millions during relief efforts for Typhoons Reming, Frank and Ondoy, as they transported literally tons of relief goods both within the Philippines and coming from abroad. Even during normal times, they give free transport for DSWD goods and even for the Office of Civil Defense when the Air Force C-130 is unavailable. The PAL Foundation is registered with the DSWD as a disaster response and crisis intervention welfare organization.

We, Good Shepherd Sisters assigned to Welcome House pray daily that Lovely and her mom will be able to travel soon so that she can receive the much-needed surgeries and have the chance to sing and dance and play like other children her age. God bless PAL Foundation for the hope they give to our people.