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Kenyan heart patient gets Gift of Life

Sandi Fenwick, COO, Felix Musyoka Kioko, Esther Mbinya Kioko and Ted Shaughnessy celebrate the treelighting at the hospital's Yule Fest celebration.

n Nov. 25, 6-year-old Felix Musyoka Kioko was zipping around 6 East in one of the hospital’s plastic taxi cabs. Outside the door to his room, he came to a quick halt to smile for the camera, then sped off past the nurses’ station. A week later, the energetic boy from Nairobi, Kenya, flipped the switch to light up the giant Christmas tree in the Main Lobby. Thanks to the generosity of a local group, Felix’s future looks bright, as well.

Felix and his mother, Esther Mbinya Kioko, came to Children’s from Kenya for a surgical procedure to repair the boy’s congenital heart defects, which included a hole in his heart, a narrow valve and a narrowing of the right ventricle. Uncorrected, the condition would have eventually lead to heart failure. The catheterization procedure and surgery he received are unavailable in Kenya, but were fairly routine for Peter Lang, MD, associate in Cardiology, and Richard Jonas, MD, cardiac-surgeon-in-chief.

Felix’s treatment at Children’s was arranged by the Needham Rotary club and paid for by Gift of Life New England, a Rotary Club program that pays for cardiac patients from around the world to receive specialized care in the United States. Felix and his mother have stayed with a host family, Needham Rotary Club members Ted and Marilyn Shaughnessy, since their arrival in early November.

The local couple didn’t just open their home, says Esther, but helped them throughout their stay. “They shared meals with us and showed us Boston. They even came to hospital appointments with us,” she says.

Esther learned of the Gift of Life program from an uncle who is a Rotarian in Uganda. She decided to make the trip with Felix while her husband, a lawyer in Nairobi, continued working back home. Although Esther used to work as a teacher, her husband’s salary has been their sole source of income since the Kenyan government stopped paying teachers’ salaries four years ago. The family spends half of its earnings on Felix’s medical bills.

But Esther is confident that her son’s medical treatment will be much more manageable when they return home. “He is doing very well now,” she says, watching him excitedly jump up and down. —CM