Let's get this baby home!

BabysCoffee

Just saw the story of baby Zoe "Ireland" Drake on the 6pm news tonight.

She was born back in October when her mother went into premature labour on a plane from Paris to USA.

The family are currently trying to raise funds to take a medical flight home

Further details are here https://www.gofundme.com/zoedrake

Neyite

I'm very wary of fund-me pages like this. There have been two previous similar ones that I know of preemie babies being born away from home and in both cases, insurance did cover all medical expenses and repatriation of the child, as well as other expenses such as day to day living expenses for the parents. But people see a tiny baby and imagine a faceless insurance bureaucracy denying them vital care and buy into the story, often raising vast amounts of money in a very short length of time.

This couple had a similar page started, and donations flooded in. The fund got to over £11,000 GBP before it emerged that all costs would be covered by insurers. Under pressure, they reluctantly agreed to make a donation, but they did on the proviso that the amount remain confidential. They were not shy in discussing how much they needed, but remain very bashful and evasive on the amount they donated. :rolleyes:

This family also raised over £75,000 GBP and again, all the necessary costs were covered by insurers, yet the gofundme page is still open. There should have been an update towards the end of last month as their child was estimated to be fit to fly by that point. As of a month ago, they still hope to re-donate the £75,000 but don't appear to have done so.

If a child was certified fit to fly, the insurers would repatriate. What a lot of people fail to realise is that there are medical issues that need to be considered for ill people being repatriated in a pressurised cabin, and many manageable conditions on the ground could develop complications while in the air, and even with a medical team on board, they are still very limited in what emergency care they can administer while in flight.

A person can be fit to be discharged from hospital care but still be unfit to drive or fly for several weeks after discharge. A big concern with premature babies is their underdeveloped lungs cope with a flight. in the latter case I linked above, the doctor recommends that the baby at least gets to what would have been the due date before repatriation to give the lungs the best chance. By my calculations, Zoe's due date isn't for another month or so, so there is a very good chance that her lungs still need to develop more in order to be stable during a flight.

So, before anyone wants to donate, I'd suggest establishing whether or not the insurers expert doctors who deal with medical repatriations daily, have cleared this baby for a repatriation or not. A hospital doctor usually does not have the medical expertise to make this decision and usually defer to the insurers doctors. I've worked on processing medical repatriations where the patient has died in mid air. I totally understand that it must be awful to be abroad and you just want your loved one home where its familiar but I would not donate to a fund where the family are perhaps disregarding expert medical advice and potentially putting their child at risk either.

In my experience, insurers are happy to fund a repatriation when its safe for the patient to do so. One costing £67,000 is loose change to them, I routinely worked on ones that cost many multiples of that, and cost was always secondary to patient care. They'd be out of business otherwise.

mordeith

They'd already raised 13,000 by the end of October and were staying in accommodation provided by a charity.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/almost-13k-raised-for-american-family-facing-prolonged-stay-in-dublin-after-baby-zoe-born-at-25-weeks-34154606.html