Healing Young Hearts

A doctor-artist alliance is saving the lives of hundreds of children with cardiac problems

- Li Nan

On September 1, 20-year-old Tenzin Chonyi decided to celebrate her graduation by dancing with her friends in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, an autonomous region in southwest China. Her nimble steps showed no signs that she had gone through three major operations for a severe congenital heart disease.

The young Tibetan had been wheelchair-bound for the first 15 years of her life, unable to stand. It meant she could not go to school, and at home no one would play with her because of the shortness of breath that overcame her after the slightest exertion.

So her biggest childhood dream was to put on a backpack, go to school and play with her classmates. That dream eventually came true in 2015, after a succession of operations, the last two by the same cardiac surgeon, Qu Zheng. “Doctor Qu gave me a new life,” Chonyi told Beijing Review.

Chonyi’s story is part of a philanthropic initiative that has enabled nearly 600 children with congenital heart diseases to receive free treatment over the past seven years. Rolling Out the Green Carpet The 57-year-old Qu is vice president of the Beijing-based Emergency General Hospital. His other identity started when he volunteered for mobile medical services in impoverished areas in Tibet in 2011. After the trip, 30 young patients from these areas were sent to the hospital to receive operations funded by the central government.

Chonyi, then 12, was one of them. When she arrived at the hospital on her mother’s back, her lips and fingernails were purple due to severe lack of oxygen. She was operated on immediately, and Qu was the surgeon. It took 48 hours after the surgery for her lips to turn pink.