MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan — Since its inception in 2003, the Manas Air Base Outreach Society (MABOS) through the Children’s Heart Fund has saved 76 children born with holes in their hearts. Sixteen children alone have been saved since January.

“It’s a great help,” said Gula Tolkonbek, mother of 10-year-old heart surgery patient Nazik Tolkonbek.

“We spent all of our money on the treatments before the surgery. We tried to find money many different places. This was the last chance. Thank you,” she said.

The most common condition the children are born with is called Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO). All babies have a hole in their heart septum during development, but it closes in 80 percent of people before birth.

For people with PFO, the hole does not close and blood flows directly from the right side of the heart to the left side of the heart without ever going to the lungs for oxygen.

The unoxygenated blood is then pushed out to the body resulting in a condition called hypoxia. Because the blood is not oxygenated, the body’s cells are not receiving the oxygen they need and the person appears to have a blue color and very little energy.

PFO is a birth defect not a disease. Its cause is not yet fully understood, but it’s known to be a congenital problem (passed down through genetics) and believed to be caused in this area by prenatal living at high altitudes.

Most of the heart patients MABOS supports are children whose mothers lived at high altitudes while pregnant.

PFO is not only a problem here, but also in high- altitude places in the United States such as Colorado.

“This is a common problem, but you don’t hear about it much in the States because it gets taken care of fairly quickly,” said Dr. Ryan Lewis, 376th Expeditionary Medical Group. “Here they just don’t have the resources.”

The patients are brought to the attention of MABOS by James Carney, Children’s Heart Fund liaison to MABOS.

Carney, who is originally from Montana, lives in Bishkek with his wife and family.

The facility where the surgeries are done, the Heart Surgery and Organ Transplant Research Institute in Bishkek, notifies Carney of a family in need. He checks out the situation to make sure the family really does have a need and then notifies the MABOS chairman.

MABOS pays $560 per surgery to repair the hole in the heart for a part called an oxygenator.

During surgery, the patient’s blood is diverted from the patient’s heart and lungs to machines to allow surgeons to work on the hole.

The oxygenator paid for by MABOS serves as a mechanical lung.

“The patients look better immediately after the surgery because their cells are getting the oxygen they were not getting before the surgery,” said Dr. Samudin Esenbekovich Shabyratier of the Research Institute.

Unfortunately, until a sure cause is identified and the defect is eliminated, the need for the Children’s Heart Fund will always be there.

As long as a need exists, MABOS will be there to do its part.

— Sergeant Jack West is a chaplain’s assistant with the U.S. Air Force. This article originally appeared on the Web site of the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing (AEW), Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan. It is in the public domain; there are no republication restrictions.