Moon festival message from our CEO

Dear China Cal supporters,

About a week ago, China Cal was presented with an award by the governor of the Yunnan Province for our work with children’s heart disease. After receiving the award, I attended an awardee banquet dinner. It’s hard to believe that this banquet occurred ten years after the first banquet I enjoyed in Yunnan Province. That first banquet changed my life and ultimately led to this great honor granted to us by the highest political official of Yunnan province.

That first dinner happened in February of 2005 in a small minority village in the mountains of central Yunnan. I was touring the province by bicycle and was invited to the home of poor peasants to attend a pre-nuptial banquet for their daughter. These simple people lived in a place with fewer resources than I had ever seen in my entire life. They treated me like family, offered me not only the banquet but a bed for the night because it was too late to return to my hotel. In addition, they refused any payment for their kindness.

Since that banquet ten years ago, China Cal has screened over 110,000 children for heart disease, has supported the cure of over 400 children with heart disease, has trained hundreds of village, town and county doctors and nurses, has supported training for Yunnan surgeons and cardiologists in other countries and has published 8 peer reviewed reports in major journals regarding heart disease and high blood pressure among the poor of Yunnan.

All of this because a desperately poor family offered an American doctor a meal and a bed. And that wouldn’t have achieved anything if it weren’t for you. Without your continued support over these years, none of the wonderful things we have done could have happened. It is only because of your volunteership and generous donations that China California Heart Watch has achieved so much.

Thank you so much and happy moon festival!

Robert Detrano MD PhD
Director, China California Heart Watch
Professor of Radiological Sciences and Public Health,
University of California, Irvine
Honorary Professor of Cardioogy,
Kunming Medical University