| News From Transplant Week of August 5, 2001 / Vol. 2 No. 31 |
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Girl 11, Spurned in Chicago, Gets Chicago Liver Transplant in Miami |
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An 11-year-old Chicago girl received a liver transplant at the University of Miami Transplant Center after being rejected by a hometown hospital because of her mother's illegal alien status and lack of insurance. Remarkably, the liver transplanted into Ana Esparza was sent to Miami by a grieving Hispanic family in Chicago who had heard about the girl's plight and chose her to be the recipient of the liver from their 17-year-old son. Ana Esparza was reported in stable condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital after the 12-hour operation, according to a hospital spokesman Omar Montejo said. Ana and her mother, Maria Munoz, moved from Mexico to Chicago nine years ago. Munoz provides in-home day care. The girl's father, Juan Esparza, still lives in Mexico where he drives a beer truck. Because he was not living with Ana when she got sick, his employer's health insurance does not cover her. Julie Pesch, a spokeswoman for Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, has said the hospital could not perform the surgery because it would not be reimbursed by Medicaid. Emergency
medical care and services must be provided to undocumented people
under the Social Security Act of 1997, but the law does not cover
transplant surgery. Jackson doctors agreed to perform the transplant after Munoz and Ana's father, Juan Esparza, raised $111,000 for the $225,000 operation. Ana was at the Fiesta del Sol in Chicago, helping raise money for her transplant, when the call came that a liver was going to be available and she needed to catch the next flight to Miami. Meanwhile, University of Miami transplant surgeon Andreas Tazakis was making the opposite journey, to evaluate the suitability of the liver of Erick Navarette, who had been shot in the neck in what police believe was a gang-related shooting. Since Navarette's liver was too large for Ana, the transplant team divided it and implanted the other half in a South Florida woman who had been on the transplant waiting list and would have died without it. Tzakis said the same fate surely awaited Ana. "We had an opportunity to look at her liver very carefully and we are elated because her liver was in fact in a worse condition than we thought it was," Tzakis said. When the young girl regained consciousness following the surgery, she squeezed her mother's hand. "I'm very happy," her mother said in Spanish. "What's important now is that my daughter's life is saved. Thanks to these angels I have next to me [the hospital treatment team], my daughter's alive." Other sources: Chicago Tribune, AP |
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