In June 2010, Jesús Dongo had plans to build a luxury hotel on 14 beautiful acres of property in Peru’s Sacred Valley, but an accident turned his plans upside down.
Doctors told Dongo that only a miracle could save the life of his daughter Abigail, then five years old. That is when he promised himself and God to “save the lives of thousands of the world’s poorest” should his daughter’s life be spared.
Hours later, a miracle happened.
That is when the idea for VIDAWASI was born. Dongo realized that the property in Peru’s Sacred Valley would be used to build a health citadel for the children of the region’s most disadvantaged families so that other parents could celebrate the health of their children.
The accident opened Dongo’s eyes to issues regarding the inequality of health care. In Peru, ninety percent of specialized pediatric treatments are concentrated in Lima, the country’s capital. Unfortunately, that means that 70 percent of children from rural areas, far from the capital city, are diagnosed and treated late, a delay that can be fatal.
Meanwhile, capacity is also an issue. For example. the Children’s National Health Institute in Lima can only treat 800 children at any given time, while there are an estimated two thousand new cases of childhood cancer in the country each year, and over 300 million children die each year from birth defects that were addressed too late. To make matters worse, only 1% of the country has private health insurance.
That is where VIDAWASI has stepped in to offer a healing hand.
The non-governmental organization (NGO)’s mission is reflected in its name. VIDA means life in Spanish, while WASI translates to home in Quechua, the language of the Incas, currently spoken by close to 4 million Peruvians. The nonprofit organization, officially launched in December 2021, strives to decentralize specialized pediatric health services, so that children living in the rural Andean Mountains of southern Peru can receive the health care they need, closer to home.
VIDAWASI also offers family housing options for the parents of their young patients. Housing is often a prohibitive factor for families traveling from remote areas to get adequate health care for their children. By providing family housing options, VIDAWASI makes it easier for parents to accompany their children as they receive treatment. Likewise, the complex also includes housing for the visiting doctors who come to treat the children.
Located in Urubamba, about an hour and a half outside of the city of Cuzco, and on the route to Machu Picchu, the VIDAWASI Health Citadel is strategically situated to serve children from eight different provinces and to receive visitors. This last point is important, because, to help fund all their medical services, VIDAWASI has created a Cultural Center that can be rented out as an event space for conferences. This unique setup helps fund the growing children’s health citadel, which is currently building a hospital wing for complex surgeries.
Services currently offered by VIDAWASI include general medicine, physical rehabilitation, dentistry, laboratory services, and psychological support.
When faced with a life-or-death situation, Dongo says that you begin to ask yourself “What did you do to justify your presence on this earth? How did you give back to the world everything life provided you?” Adding that, “When your answer is just for you, for you, and for yours, the answer is very painful.”
