A baby is born. A new life, totally unique, comes into being. Once… in a terrible while, something goes wrong. A baby is born with a broken heart It is called a Congenital Heart Defect or CHD, and it is the most common type of birth defect. It happens every 15 minutes somewhere in America. Even if their defect gets repaired, children with CHDs are never cured. They face lifelong risks of health problems like heart failure or stroke and the possibility of multiple open-heart surgeries over their lifetime. Here is the reality despite these facts: research into these birth defects is drastically underfunded. Of every dollar the government spends on medical funding, only a fraction of a penny is directed toward congenital heart defect research. But there is great hope on the horizon and it has a name. The Children’s Heart Foundation. It is the country’s leading organization solely dedicated to funding lifesaving CHD research. Since 1996, they’ve funded nearly $14 million in research. The results of the types of research they've funded have been dramatic: survival rates have gone up and death rates have dropped by almost 38 percent. Come with us now and meet some of the people behind this extraordinary endeavor.
