Hoai Thuong is 19 months old, and cute as a button.
She lies, lively eyes darting, in her hospital bed at Gleneagles, her oversized head wrapped in swathes of bandages.
The Vietnamese infant has just had an operation in the morning for hydrocephalus, a condition where fluid accumulates inside the brain. It’s not her first brain op; she’s had more than half a dozen since birth.
The pressure from the fluid build-up has affected her optic nerves.
“See, she can’t see,” says Ms Lisa Nguyen Thi Thao Huong as she waves her right index finger in front of Hoai’s face.
The 35-year-old is familiar with the baby’s condition, and those of at least six other Vietnamese babies afflicted with hydrocephalus and other infections in the same hospital.
That’s because she has raised funds for them to be treated in Singapore, and is the liaison and translator between their anxious parents and doctors as well as other hospital staff.
The Vietnamese executive assistant, who is married to a Singaporean, is not paid for what she does. The mother of three just loves children and wants to give the less fortunate a helping hand.
Over the last couple of years, she and a small group of friends – including a couple of accountants and a Buddhist monk – in Vietnam have raised a few million dollars for critically ill children in the country to get medical treatment in Singapore.
They do it through a Facebook page, Children Are Innocent. About 95% of the donors are from Vietnam.
After two years of working, she moved to Ho Chi Minh City to become personal assistant to the chairman of Vietnamese conglomerate Dan Xuan Group.
By then, she had started doing charity work with one of her sisters and a couple of friends. They would cook food for patients and families in hospitals and take toys and clothes to orphanages.
It started in 2007, when her father sought treatment for cancer of the jawbone at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. She says conditions at the hospital, like those at others in the city, were deplorable. “There was no air-conditioning and there was a terrible smell,” she adds.
There were also not enough beds and it was not uncommon to see patients and their families sleeping on the floor, she says.
“My father had to go and look for a corner to sleep. He was in pain but there was no place to rest. We saw how hard it was for everybody, so we decided that if he recovered, we would do charity. We couldn’t start immediately because all our money went to his treatment.”
Her father died the following year but she decided to fulfil his wish. “We didn’t do anything grand, just helping out at schools, orphanages and hospitals whenever we could,” she says.
Her life took another turn when she met Mr Adam Chua, then a Singaporean construction supervisor, at the airport a couple of years later.
They kept in touch and one year later, when she came to Singapore on a business trip, they reconnected and started courting.
Six months later, Mr Chua, now 37 and a construction manager, proposed. They got married in 2012, but she did not move to Singapore until she was seven months pregnant with their first child.
“I do not like to do nothing, so I was working and riding my motorbike until then. The doctor said I would not be allowed on a plane after that; that’s when I came,” says Ms Nguyen, who became a mother for the third time three months ago.
Not one to rest on her laurels, she looked for ways to make friends and earn some pocket money while adjusting to life in her new country.
“I thought it would be a good idea for Vietnamese people to get to know one another. So I booked barbecue pits in East Coast Park, went online and told people ‘no need money, just bring food’. More than 30 people came,” says Ms Nguyen, who went on to organise more get-togethers.
About four years ago, life took a harrowing turn when she was three months pregnant with her second child.
She started bleeding profusely.
“I was so scared that I was going to lose my baby, so I started praying for my baby to be safe,” says the Buddhist. “I vowed to do charity and help other people.”
Her daughter, now three, was delivered safely but Ms Nguyen, who now works as a personal assistant in a trading company, was so caught up with work and family that she forgot her promise to do good.
While surfing the Internet one day in 2016, she came across an appeal to help Phuc, a Vietnamese baby boy who was in Singapore to seek treatment for a rare skin condition.
“He looked so pitiful, as though he had burns all over his face and body. There was so much pain in my heart,” she says. “I think it was a reminder by the gods to keep my promise.”
She did, by digging into her pockets and rallying friends to raise $2,000 for baby Phuc.
The next infant she helped was Tran Ngoc Hoang, who needed a cornea transplant.
But it was really the case of Duc Loc, an abandoned Vietnamese boy suffering from hydrocephalus, that took her fund-raising efforts to another level.
Abandoned at a temple in the southern coastal province of Ben Tre, Duc Loc arrived in Singapore last year for several operations to save him.
“He was a very handsome and cute baby. I cried for him a lot and so did a lot of Singaporeans when they read about him in the newspapers,” she says of the then seven-month-old baby.
Ms Nguyen wrote a moving plea to help him on her Facebook account. Together with some of her friends, she raised about a few hundred thousand dollars for Duc Loc from Vietnamese donors.
Determined to do more to help unfortunate and sick Vietnamese children, she set up Children Are Innocent, chronicling the plight of those needing medical attention, and the progress of those receiving treatment, in Singapore.
Helping her to raise funds in Vietnam is Master Tue Thanh, abbot of the Trieu San Tay temple in Hue city.
Together, they have raised nearly $3 million to fly about 25 babies from poor families into Singapore for medical treatment over the last two years. The group also raises funds to build schools and orphanages in Vietnam.
“I am just connecting donor and patient,” says Ms Nguyen, adding that those wishing to help can also pay directly to hospitals treating the babies.
Both her employers as well as her husband are supportive of what she does.
Her mother-in-law, she says, helps to look after the children and Mr Chua even opens up his home for some of the babies’ parents who can’t afford to stay in a hotel.
Watch the video story below:
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 14 October 2018