A really nice story
I wanted a really nice, upbeat story after yesterday’s disturbing and bizarre discovery. Thanks to Michele Malkin … I have just the thing.
Growing up in the slums of Kabul and suffering from a life-threatening heart defect, 11-year-old Vasila Hossaini feared that she may only have a few more years to live.
That was last year. Today, she’s a beaming 12-year-old, with dazzling bright eyes, full of energy and soaking up the atmosphere of New York after charitable donations brought her here and helped pay for life-saving heart surgery at the New York University Medical Center.
Vasila impressed 2 U. S. filmmakers, Stacia Teele and Ed Robbins, with her incredible talent and bright spirit. They made a film about her called “Vasila’s Heart,” which aired on Nightline on March 2. The generous nature of Americans soon generated enough money to pay for her and her father to come to New York City for the life-saving operation she so desperately needed.
Her heart defect, which allowed unoxygenated blood to circulate through her body, was corrected surgically on May 17 by Dr. Stephen B. Colvin at the NYU Medical Center. He is also the co-founder of Project Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit organization that helps provide medical care to impoverished children suffering from heart defects.
Congratulations to the team of doctors and nurses who did a fabulous job! And what, you may ask, does Vasilia want to be when she grows up?
“I want to become a doctor, a heart surgeon,” she said. “Good people have helped me and I want to help others when I grow up.”
Here is little Ms. Vasila Hossaini meeting President Bush in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House on Thursday, June 2, 2005.
If you are super interested in this story and wish to purchase the transcript of the Nightline episode … click here.
I tried to also find the video of the episode, but the video listings have a truly inefficient search engine and I could not find it!
Project Kids Worldwide … their VASILA’S HEART page
Advocates for Afghanistan … their blog for updates on Vasilia, as well as a lot of pics!
The article that Michele Malkin linked to is from Newsday.com, however … for the first time since I have been looking stuff up on the internet … which is much longer than I have had this blog … all the news outlets listed under this category … copied the original article and reprinted it (hopefully with permission 
). I guess only one reporter, Misha Savic of the Associated Press, decided to write about this!