Rosa Vera Fund Board Member and Medical Liaison Dr. Lisa Hunt was recently featured in Stroll Magazine. The article details her many contributions to the fund and highlights the fund’s history.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Sometimes change happens from big events, and sometimes it comes from a single little girl named Rosa Vera. Local pediatrician Lisa Hunt, M.D., was looking for a different way to do medicine. In 2010 she was involved in community health, helping underserved people in the valley. Her colleague, Jonathan Melk, told Lisa about a trip he had taken down to Bolivia as a medical student. He told a story of a little girl who had changed his life and changed the lives of hundreds of children in a small village called Montero.
Rosa Vera was born at her home in Montero, Bolivia, with a serious congenital heart malformation called Tetralogy of Fallot. As a daughter of a traditional, Quechua-speaking family with virtually no education or financial resources, Rosa didn’t receive the routine surgery that has corrected the malformation in countless other children. Dr. Jonathan Melk met Rosa in March 2003, after she had already developed advanced symptoms of her disease. Further evaluation confirmed a dismal future without major surgical intervention. With much effort, the goodwill of Bolivian professionals and with funding provided exclusively by Dr. Melk’s friends and family totaling around $3,000, Rosa was granted her opportunity for surgical correction. On May 7, 2003, Rosa had the surgery. To the sadness of everyone involved, she passed away in the final stage of her surgery — she was only 11 years old.
Read the full article as a PDF.
I can only hope to provide positive change for our precious patients and to impact their lives as much as they have improved mine. – Dr. Lisa Hunt, M.D.
Dr. Hunt at La Escuelita with a patient and his family
With another patient and her mother at La Escuelita