Saturday, January 30, 2010
Video: Eduardo Needs A Heart to Save His Life
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Eduardo Needs a Heart to Save His Life! from Jason Bosch on Vimeo.
Here's some raw footage I took from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign Meeting in New Orleans on January 16, 2010 talking about Eduardo.
Eduardo, A 14 year old boy named Eduardo Loredo was hospitalized at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, on July 2009. It was discovered that his heart was enlarging, making the pumping of the blood difficult. Eduardo has been at Children's for 3 months since July. Eduardo was given medication to improve his heart condition, but the medication did not have an effect on his heart. Doctors eventually told the family that Eduardo would need a heart transplant. Karina, Eduardo's mom, was then contacted by Kathleen Hurley, RN, CPNP, Transplant Coordinatorfrom the Children's Hospital in St. Louis to let her know that they would do the heart transplant and would pay for all the expenses as well. Meanwhile doctors had Eduardo go through risky procedures to examine his heart. A few days later Karina received a phone call from the Children's Hospital in St. Louis letting her know that they had made a mistake and Eduardo would not be receiving the heart transplant. When Karina called back Dr. Kathleen Hurley, she was told that there was no record of any procedures for Eduardo and that they had never promised to do the operation. Children's Mercy hospital (KCMO) then told Karina that in order to put her son on the waiting list for a heart, the family would need $100,000 as a down payment. Eduardo and his family don't have health insurance. On Wed. Oct. 14th, after being at Children's Mercy in KC, MO for 3 months, Eduardo was sent home by the hospital. Children's Mercy is currently providing Eduardo with IV and oral medication to stabilize his heart. He was denied being place on the waiting list and denied the heart transplant. We have to let our communities and the nation know that EDUARDO needs a HEART transplant and that this inhumanity against Eduardo and his family will not be tolerated. Please, help us spread the word and let us know if you know of anyone who could possibly help Eduardo.
facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=182137601281
Labels: Eduardo Loredo, Health Care, Heart Transplant
Monday, November 23, 2009
Teenager denied lifesaving transplant in US: National appeal to save Eduardo's life
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While heath care reform dominates the national debate, there is a 14 year-old boy in Kansas City, Kansas named Eduardo Loredo who could die any day.
Eduardo is being denied a heart transplant because he does not have health insurance (or enough money) to pay for a heart transplant and follow up care. Eduardo was diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy, a serious disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and eventually stops working altogether, and was hospitalized at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO beginning in July 2009. Eduardo was sent home from Children’s Mercy Hospital on October 14, 2009 and told that he had the potential to live another two or three years, but that he could also die any day. Missouri’s Medicaid program is generally available only to citizens and certain legal immigrants who meet a five year waiting period. These restrictive rules prevent Eduardo from qualifying for health insurance that would cover both the transplant procedure and the long-term follow up care required to ensure a successful transplant. Without this coverage, the total cost of the transplant would cost his family $500,000. Children’s Mercy Hospital told Eduardo that without an up-front payment of $100,000, he would not even be able to get on the waiting list for a heart transplant. While Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, MO originally offered to perform the transplant surgery for no cost, this offer was later retracted. His family is simply being told that his life is not a priority.
On December 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These human rights include necessities such as housing, education, food, and health care. Although the United States signed this declaration, we are still waiting for our government to guarantee these rights.
Martin Luther King, Jr declared: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
Whoever we are—whatever the color of our skin or how much money we have in the bank account or where we come from—we all deserve the chance to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. And so does Eduardo.
The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) calls on hospitals, doctors, health clinics, politicians, religious people, and all people of conscience to take responsibility for Eduardo’s life, and help him to live. Please contact Cheri Honkala, national Organizer of PPEHRC, at 267-439-8419 or cherippehrc@hotmail.comto help us save Eduardo.
As our government continues the battle to reform our health care system, may they look at Eduardo and declare: ENOUGH.
Enough people have died as a result of being barred from medical care that could have saved their lives.
Not one more Death. Health Care is a Human Right!
Labels: Cheri Honkala, Eduardo Loredo, Health Care, Kansas, Kansas City
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
EDUARDO NEEDS A HEART...and he can't get one because he does not have health insurance
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A 14 year old boy named Eduardo Loredo was hospitalized at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, on July 2009. It was discovered that his heart was enlarging, making the pumping of the blood difficult. Eduardo has been at Children's for 3 months since July. Eduardo was given medication to improve his heart condition, but the medication did not have an effect on his heart. Doctors eventually told the family that Eduardo would need a heart transplant. Children's Mercy worked with St. Luke's Hospital to ensure that Eduardo would receive the transplant and Karina, Eduardo's mom, was told by St. Luke hospital that St. Luke hospital would pay for all the operation expenses. A few days Karina received a phone call from St. Luke's Hospital letting her know that they had made a mistake and Eduardo would not be receiving the heart transplant. Moreover, Children's Mercy hospital told Karina that in order to put her son on the waiting list for a heart, the family would need $100,000 as a down payment. Eduardo and his family don't have health insurance. On Wed. Oct. 14th, after being at Children's Mercy for 3 months, Eduardo was sent home by the hospital. He was denied being place on the waiting list and denied the heart transplant. The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign have made their priority letting everyone know in our community and the nation that EDUARDO needs a HEART transplant and that this inhumanity and injustice against Eduardo and his family will not be tolerated.
Please, help us spread the word and let us know if you know of anyone who could possibly help Eduardo.
Please contact:
The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club at: lunajccc@gmail.com
Nicole Vengrove from the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign at nicvengrove@gmail.com.
Labels: Eduardo Loredo, Health Care
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Organize for health reform in Philadelphia!
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The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) will be hosting a brainstorming meeting to organize for health reform in Philadelphia. Help prevent more from dying from the lack of health insurance!
What: Organizing for health reform
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 6-8pm
Location: Atonement Lutheran Church, 1542 E Montgomery Ave, 2nd floor, Philadelphia.
Please RSVP (or just show up!) to: Nicole Vengrove nicvengrove@gmail.com or Cheri Honkola cheriPPEHRC@hotmail.com
What: Organizing for health reform
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 from 6-8pm
Location: Atonement Lutheran Church, 1542 E Montgomery Ave, 2nd floor, Philadelphia.
Please RSVP (or just show up!) to: Nicole Vengrove nicvengrove@gmail.com or Cheri Honkola cheriPPEHRC@hotmail.com
Labels: Health Care, Philadelphia, PPEHRC
Thursday, October 29, 2009
EDUARDO NEEDS A HEART...and he can't get one because he does not have health insurance
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A 14 year old boy named Eduardo Loredo was hospitalized at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO, on July 2009. It was discovered that his heart was enlarging, making the pumping of the blood difficult. Eduardo has been at Children's for 3 months since July. Eduardo was given medication to improve his heart condition, but the medication did not have an effect on his heart. Doctors eventually told the family that Eduardo would need a heart transplant. Children's Mercy worked with St. Luke's Hospital to ensure that Eduardo would receive the transplant and Karina, Eduardo's mom, was told by St. Luke hospital that St. Luke hospital would pay for all the operation expenses. A few days Karina received a phone call from St. Luke's Hospital letting her know that they had made a mistake and Eduardo would not be receiving the heart transplant. Moreover, Children's Mercy hospital told Karina that in order to put her son on the waiting list for a heart, the family would need $100,000 as a down payment. Eduardo and his family don't have health insurance. On Wed. Oct. 14th, after being at Children's Mercy for 3 months, Eduardo was sent home by the hospital. He was denied being place on the waiting list and denied the heart transplant. The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign have made their priority letting everyone know in our community and the nation that EDUARDO needs a HEART transplant and that this inhumanity and injustice against Eduardo and his family will not be tolerated.
Please, help us spread the word and let us know if you know of anyone who could possibly help Eduardo.
Please contact:
The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club at: lunajccc@gmail.com
Please, help us spread the word and let us know if you know of anyone who could possibly help Eduardo.
Please contact:
The JCCC Latinos United Now and Always Club at: lunajccc@gmail.com
Labels: Health Care
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Build A Health Justice Movement
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By Nicole Martin, WEAP's IJES Associate
Original Article: http://weap.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=138&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01returnid=17
May 6, 2009
The work of poverty and health justice knows no boundaries. That is why the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) has always made it a point to link the local situation to state and national levels. The pain and injustices we are experiencing here in our home city of Oakland, CA, are the same struggles that are occurring in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and hundreds of other cities and towns across the United States. This national scope and the dire need to make connections with people mobilizing across the country, was a driving force behind WEAP’s recent “mini-tour” of Rochester, New York.
From April 20-22, WEAP’s Executive Director, Ethel Long-Scott, and WEAP’s Institute for Justice and Economic Security Associate, Nicole Martin, traveled to New York and joined with the Rochester arm of the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA) in anti-poverty leadership development, education, and organizing work. Nationally, SWAA is an organization committed to eradicating the structural causes of inequality and injustice in our society. Founded in 1985, “the Alliance is based on principles that reflect a concern for social and economic justice, peace and coalition building with progressive social movements.” Both WEAP and SWAA are members of the umbrella organization, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) and are dedicated to building a broad social justice movement across color lines to abolish poverty.
With the building of that movement in mind, for three exciting days, WEAP educated and organized for "Health care as a Human Right" by teaching about Single Payer & Universal Health Care, sounding the alarm against unjust health care “Individual Mandates,” and highlighting the immediate need to end poverty and build a broad social movement to secure the health justice we need in the United States right now.
To spotlight the urgent need to end poverty, Long-Scott appeared on two radio shows to help promote the message of poverty eradication. The first was on WDKX radio, one of the few independent African-American owned radio stations, on the “Wake UP Club” show. Long-Scott was also interviewed on WXXI radio, a Rochester public radio station akin to the Bay Area’s KQED, on the Bob Smith Show. On both shows, WEAP discussed the increasing poverty in our cities, our broken health care system, and how we need a social contract that works in the interest of the people and not for the profit of a few over the many.
WEAP also conducted two major speaking engagements during the mini-tour. The first was near Rochester at the Brockport campus of the State University of New York, as part of the American Democracy Project Speaker Series Presentation. The audience was approximately one hundred and fifty people, primarily social welfare and women’s studies students and scholars. The next night, Long-Scott spoke to the community at the Dugan Center of St. Mary’s Church. This audience, also around one hundred and fifty, included a diverse array of people – social justice activists, concerned community leaders and members, the homeless and poor, and local politicians.
At each radio show and each speaking engagement, the people of Rochester responded positively to the vision that WEAP’s Long-Scott presented. They articulated, often passionately and guided by their own heartbreaking misfortunes, their need and desire for change. People agreed that there is something fundamentally wrong with both our current health care system, and our overall economic system. Like WEAP, they also said we need to start creating a world that places human rights ahead of the profits that increasingly leave so many people homeless, hungry, sick, jobless, and without an adequate education. In other words, the audiences indicated they are tired of being treated like they aren’t worth it, like they can be kicked to the curbside and forgotten because our industries, including the medical industry, follow a “throw away” policy which dictates that cutting costs is the bottom line.
In between radio shows, speaking engagements, receptions, and strategy sessions, the superb leaders of the Rochester SWAA found the time to give its WEAP guests a tour of Rochester. Currently, Rochester has the second highest rate of child poverty among the 100 largest cities in the United States, growing income inequality, and is often called the “Murder Capital” of New York. As Californians from the Oakland Bay Area, it was absolutely eerie at times to see the similarities between one East Coast city and our own West Coast city- cities with rich histories and diversity, mixed with extreme poverty and wealth, sometimes just blocks away from each other. One of the most memorable and sadly poignant moments was a stop at Rochester’s House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in a poverty and violence stricken neighborhood, only a couple of neighborhoods away from such historical landmarks as Susan B. Anthony’s and Frederick Douglass’ homes. Inside this shelter that refuses to turn a single soul away, the amazing Sister Grace, who runs it and keeps it alive despite constant threats of closure, has been filling a wall with faces. It is her wall of death, as she has placed there every obituary of all the people she knows and loves and whose lives have been taken too soon by poverty.
It is because of Sister Grace’s wall of death, it is because of the hundred plus homicides in Oakland that occur every year, it is because of the three-million-plus homeless every night across the United States, and it is because of the some 90 million uninsured and underinsured Americans, that Long-Scott reiterated again and again on the Rochester mini-tour: “We MUST work forward towards a new vision. This new vision, where everyone’s human rights are secured and poverty is eliminated, MUST inform new strategies. A new, more just, America can’t happen until we all get involved in breaking the silence on the injustices we face and dedicating ourselves to fighting to secure health care as a human right. It makes a difference what we do.”
Original Article: http://weap.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=138&cntnt01origid=15&cntnt01returnid=17
May 6, 2009
The work of poverty and health justice knows no boundaries. That is why the Women’s Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) has always made it a point to link the local situation to state and national levels. The pain and injustices we are experiencing here in our home city of Oakland, CA, are the same struggles that are occurring in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and hundreds of other cities and towns across the United States. This national scope and the dire need to make connections with people mobilizing across the country, was a driving force behind WEAP’s recent “mini-tour” of Rochester, New York.
From April 20-22, WEAP’s Executive Director, Ethel Long-Scott, and WEAP’s Institute for Justice and Economic Security Associate, Nicole Martin, traveled to New York and joined with the Rochester arm of the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA) in anti-poverty leadership development, education, and organizing work. Nationally, SWAA is an organization committed to eradicating the structural causes of inequality and injustice in our society. Founded in 1985, “the Alliance is based on principles that reflect a concern for social and economic justice, peace and coalition building with progressive social movements.” Both WEAP and SWAA are members of the umbrella organization, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) and are dedicated to building a broad social justice movement across color lines to abolish poverty.
With the building of that movement in mind, for three exciting days, WEAP educated and organized for "Health care as a Human Right" by teaching about Single Payer & Universal Health Care, sounding the alarm against unjust health care “Individual Mandates,” and highlighting the immediate need to end poverty and build a broad social movement to secure the health justice we need in the United States right now.
To spotlight the urgent need to end poverty, Long-Scott appeared on two radio shows to help promote the message of poverty eradication. The first was on WDKX radio, one of the few independent African-American owned radio stations, on the “Wake UP Club” show. Long-Scott was also interviewed on WXXI radio, a Rochester public radio station akin to the Bay Area’s KQED, on the Bob Smith Show. On both shows, WEAP discussed the increasing poverty in our cities, our broken health care system, and how we need a social contract that works in the interest of the people and not for the profit of a few over the many.
WEAP also conducted two major speaking engagements during the mini-tour. The first was near Rochester at the Brockport campus of the State University of New York, as part of the American Democracy Project Speaker Series Presentation. The audience was approximately one hundred and fifty people, primarily social welfare and women’s studies students and scholars. The next night, Long-Scott spoke to the community at the Dugan Center of St. Mary’s Church. This audience, also around one hundred and fifty, included a diverse array of people – social justice activists, concerned community leaders and members, the homeless and poor, and local politicians.
At each radio show and each speaking engagement, the people of Rochester responded positively to the vision that WEAP’s Long-Scott presented. They articulated, often passionately and guided by their own heartbreaking misfortunes, their need and desire for change. People agreed that there is something fundamentally wrong with both our current health care system, and our overall economic system. Like WEAP, they also said we need to start creating a world that places human rights ahead of the profits that increasingly leave so many people homeless, hungry, sick, jobless, and without an adequate education. In other words, the audiences indicated they are tired of being treated like they aren’t worth it, like they can be kicked to the curbside and forgotten because our industries, including the medical industry, follow a “throw away” policy which dictates that cutting costs is the bottom line.
In between radio shows, speaking engagements, receptions, and strategy sessions, the superb leaders of the Rochester SWAA found the time to give its WEAP guests a tour of Rochester. Currently, Rochester has the second highest rate of child poverty among the 100 largest cities in the United States, growing income inequality, and is often called the “Murder Capital” of New York. As Californians from the Oakland Bay Area, it was absolutely eerie at times to see the similarities between one East Coast city and our own West Coast city- cities with rich histories and diversity, mixed with extreme poverty and wealth, sometimes just blocks away from each other. One of the most memorable and sadly poignant moments was a stop at Rochester’s House of Mercy, a homeless shelter in a poverty and violence stricken neighborhood, only a couple of neighborhoods away from such historical landmarks as Susan B. Anthony’s and Frederick Douglass’ homes. Inside this shelter that refuses to turn a single soul away, the amazing Sister Grace, who runs it and keeps it alive despite constant threats of closure, has been filling a wall with faces. It is her wall of death, as she has placed there every obituary of all the people she knows and loves and whose lives have been taken too soon by poverty.
It is because of Sister Grace’s wall of death, it is because of the hundred plus homicides in Oakland that occur every year, it is because of the three-million-plus homeless every night across the United States, and it is because of the some 90 million uninsured and underinsured Americans, that Long-Scott reiterated again and again on the Rochester mini-tour: “We MUST work forward towards a new vision. This new vision, where everyone’s human rights are secured and poverty is eliminated, MUST inform new strategies. A new, more just, America can’t happen until we all get involved in breaking the silence on the injustices we face and dedicating ourselves to fighting to secure health care as a human right. It makes a difference what we do.”
Labels: Ethel Long-Scott, Health Care, Social Welfare Action Alliance, WEAP
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