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Since my little sister Clementine was two years old, she has done a month long campaign every Halloween of 30 costumes in 30 days, to raise awareness of congenital heart defects or CHD.
CHD’s are the biggest cause of death in children under ten, more children die from heart defects every year than all childhood cancers combined. When you hear of a teen dying unexpectedly in the middle of a sports game it’s very often from an undetected CHD. Or similarly a teen who goes to bed but never wakes up, again an detected CHD is very often the cause.
Before Clementine was born we had no idea she would have a heart defect, despite our mother having lots of tests whilst expecting. Most heart defects cannot be found until after birth. Clementine was born 6 weeks early and had pneumothorax ( a hole in her lung ) along with trouble breathing – leading her to have an echocardiogram in the icu . That is when her heart defect was detected. Lucky for her it was.
The aim of Clementines annual costume campaign is to make people across the globe aware that if echocardiograms became standard at birth, a lot of lives world wide could be saved.
Awareness and then preventive care is key to getting CHD children to adulthood.
Congenital, means born with and although CHD patients are surviving longer than ever, they can never be cured only patched up and helped along as much as possible.
I am so proud of how much effort Clementine and my Mother put into their annual awareness campaign it’s as always been very entertaining to see all the different costumes daily on Instagram @Clementine.phoebe
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