AN GIANG PROVINCE, Vietnam, April 13th , 2013—FedEx Express, the world’s largest express transportation company and a subsidiary of FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX), and Heartbeat Vietnam, a program of the Vina Capital Foundation, are commencing their third year of “FedEx Delivers Heartbeats.” Through mobile medical outreach clinics, the program gives poor children with heart defects living in remote areas access to healthcare services.
“FedEx Delivers Heartbeats” sends Vietnam’s top cardiologists and surgeons to remote areas in order to diagnose and treat thousands of poor children who have little or no access to transportation.
Last year, “FedEx Delivers Heartbeats” brought 30 mobile medical outreach clinics to 19 provinces and 16 districts across Vietnam, delivering free healthcare services to 8,814 children, which included 777 of them receiving heart operations. Continuing these achievements and extending its reach, the program will run through December 2013 in 11 provinces and 22 districts.
Each “FedEx Delivers Heartbeats” clinic lasts two to three days per province and provides free cardiac care to children deep in the rural areas, including diagnostic testing, treatment, and even placement on the national cardiac surgery waiting list when necessary. Children who receive surgery through Heartbeat Vietnam can use the free clinics for their post-operative care and avoid multiple trips to big cities.
FedEx volunteers contribute their time to support “FedEx Delivers Heartbeats” by assisting families with registration at the clinics and visiting with them while their children wait to be examined. They also help increase awareness of the program by interviewing the families and writing profile stories for the Heartbeat website and newsletter.
“For poor families who have children with congenital heart disease and live too far away from hospitals or medical centers, receiving professional healthcare services would be virtually impossible,” said Nguyen Duy Binh, senior manager of Indochina and chief representative of FedEx Vietnam. “Given the achievements of ‘FedEx Delivers Heartbeats’ and the difference that it makes to the lives of poor children in Vietnam, we are very pleased to continue our support of the program so that we can bring access to more children in need of cardiac care.”
“A lot of children suffering from serious diseases, especially congenital heart diseases, come from poor families, which makes their families’ situations go from bad to worse due to increased financial burden,” said Ms. Robin King Austin, CEO & executive director of the VinaCapital Foundation. “We are very happy to be able to lend a helping hand by offering them free healthcare services through these mobile medical outreach clinics. We hope that this program will partly bring these disadvantaged children a better and brighter future. Together with our generous sponsor FedEx, we will continue to extend this program to more rural, remote areas where poor children are isolated from the most basic of medical services.”