OPERATION YASMIN
Child Medical Mission
Mosul, Iraq
Meet Yasmine
A cheeky, 10 year old girl.
Veterans Rebuilding Life partners met Yasmine and her father, at the state-run cardiac hospital in Erbil, while on a routine visit to check up on two little boys, ages 2 and 4, who had just completed successful heart surgeries.
Yasmine and her father had just gotten the bad news. Yasmine had a congenital heart defect and needed an open heart surgery or risk irreversible damage to her heart.
The cost was $3,000, less than a fraction of what it would cost in the United States.
Still, Yasmine’s family could not fathom that number, not even selling all their assets combined.
Yasmine’s father was a construction worker, slaving more than 12 hours a day under Iraq’s brutal heat for the equivalent of $10 a day.
With mouths to feed and rent to pay, Yasmine’s family had no savings.
Yasmine was facing a certain death because her family could not afford $3,000.
Veterans Rebuilding Life relied on the kindness and generosity of its community who raised the funds to fix Yasmine’s hearts.