Creating Everyday Miracles

For 22 hours last week, 50 doctors, nurses and other medical staffers performed the intricate, delicate work of separating year-old Guatemalan twins joined at the head since birth. Did anyone not feel a wallop of emotion when the UCLA doctors declared the operation a success? Did anyone not, a moment later, imagine such fine medicine’s staggering financial wallop?

Fortunately for the parents of “Las Maritas,” a young and humble couple from an impoverished village in southern Guatemala, an organization called Healing the Children paid for the girls’ trip to Los Angeles. The medical personnel involved in the surgery donated their services, and the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA hopes that private contributions will pay for the estimated $1.5 million in other costs.

Fortunately for other poor children, such generosity is common in Southern California, where individuals, organizations and medical institutions do good deeds daily--repairing cleft palates, attaching artificial limbs--deeds that don’t get the publicity of a dramatic procedure that will allow twins to look into each others’ eyes for the first time.

Consider that Dr. Stuart Siegel, the director of the Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, has for two decades done part-time doctoring and fund-raising for children with cancer. An estimated 25% of the center’s budget comes from charity.

A similar generosity moved Capt. Marc Segal and a group of firefighters based in South-Central Los Angeles to assist Genesis Avila, 9, who lost part of her right arm in a meat grinder. Concerned about her future, Segal contacted Shriners Hospital in Los Angeles, which agreed to provide Genesis free medical care and a prosthetic limb as well as counseling and physical therapy until she turns 18. The Shriners routinely offer that kind of help.

Still, thousands of Southern California children need medical and dental attention--as do countless others in less fortunate places. The Guatemalan twins have inspired thousands to open their checkbooks. The less dramatic good work going on each day could use support too.

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To Take Action: The United Way of Greater Los Angeles supports numerous health-care organizations for children. Call donor services at (213) 630-2371 or log on to the Web site, www.unitedwayla.org. For Shriners Hospital for Children-Los Angeles (3160 Geneva St., Los Angeles, CA 90020), telephone (213) 388-3151. For Childrens Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, phone (323) 669-2308 or go online, www. childrenshospitalla.org.