A Hole in the Heart, a Tuk-Tuk Driver's Sister, and a Delicate Operation

She is twenty-one and studying at a Technical Health Institute, training to care for other people. Now she is the one who needs care.

Her family lives in one of the low-income areas on the edge of Greater Cairo. Her father is retired on a pension of about 1,900 EGP a month. Her mother keeps their home. Her brother drives a tuk-tuk and brings in what he can. It is a household held together by small amounts and steady effort.

She has a hole in her heart, and she needs a delicate operation to repair it. The surgery costs about 190,000 EGP. Her church gave 5,000 EGP, which was all the church could manage. That left almost the entire bill in front of a family living on a modest pension and a tuk-tuk driver's earnings.

The gap was 185,000 EGP, roughly $3,800.

There is something fitting about a young woman studying health care needing exactly the kind of care she is learning to give. Luke's Kids committed to closing that gap so she can have the operation and return to the life and the studies she had mapped out, before her own heart got in the way.