Arab News: It’s a simple gesture, but it can help to break a world record — and mend hearts. Little Hearts is a project that gives impoverished children with congenital heart disease (CHD) access to life-saving treatment, thanks in large part to philanthropists from Saudi Arabia. To continue doing its good work, it is aiming to gain international recognition by launching a Guinness World Record attempt to create the largest-ever online photo gallery. Little Hearts is asking people across the globe to submit a picture of themselves making a hand-to-heart gesture to raise awareness of CHD — caused by a problem in the structure of the heart — and vital funds toward the projects’ goals.
“The Guinness World record itself is to get 60,000 photos of individuals making the heart gesture, which just fits perfectly with the campaign, as every heart deserves to beat,” said Reza Malik, fund-raising officer for Little Hearts. “We want to set ourselves a target of a year.”The Little Hearts project provides free life-saving cardiac surgery and interventional cardiac catheterization for children with congenital heart defects from underprivileged families irrespective of gender, race or religion.Each year more than a million babies worldwide are born with CHD; 100,000 of them will not live to see their first birthday and thousands more will die before they reach adulthood. “The majority of these who do survive beyond the first year of life will live in pain unless they live in the developed world where they have access to health systems,” Malik said.
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