Coming Back to Vietnam
Sue McGregor is co-founder of Helping Hand Helping Hearts (HHHH), an Australian NGO dedicated to providing support, health care, and education for disadvantaged children and communities. To date, Sue’s and HHHH’s support of Heartbeat Vietnam has saved the lives of eight children precious Vietnamese children.
For the past three years, since my husband passed away from heart disease at the age of 40, I had been looking for a way to honor his memory. Little did I know that I would find that opportunity in Vietnam, thousands of kilometers away from my home in Australia.
Sue and her sister Jen visit some of the children who will receive lifesaving heart surgery thanks to Helping Hand Helping Hearts and Heartbeat Vietnam. These surgeries took place at Trieu An Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.
I learned about the VinaCapital Foundation and their Heartbeat Vietnam program earlier this year during an amazingly rewarding three months spent in HCMC volunteering as a psychologist. It was then that my sister Jen and I knew that we could make a real difference in the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. In Australia our children have free access to the best medical care, state-of-the-art hospitals and medical equipment, and the most experienced surgeons. We learned that the children of Vietnam, through no fault of their own nor their families but due simply to a lifetime of poverty, were unable to access the life saving treatment that they so desperately needed.
And so the journey of Helping Hand Helping Hearts began. Jen and I established a charitable trust to raise funds in Australia to support health and education initiatives for children affected by poverty and life-threatening illnesses. Many asked us why Vietnam, and the answer was simple: nowhere in the world had I seen so much tragedy and poverty and hardship faced with such dignity, humility, warmth, friendship, and an ever-present smile as I saw during my months working with the Vietnamese people.
Sue holds one of the youngest heart patients, an 8-month-old boy named Pham Hoang Phuc. Phuc's condition was so complex that Heartbeat Vietnam brought over Dr. Erle Austin, an American heart surgeon, to operate on him.
It was with great joy that we became associated with the team at the VinaCapital Foundation and began raising money back home in Australia to help fund life saving heart surgeries for some very beautiful children. And so with the profiles we had been sent of the children whose lives we were about to help save, we boarded the plane back to Vietnam knowing that we were about to experience something truly special.
