Sick Orphan Denied Victim

Melvin Karges and his wife Cheryl know about helping southeast Asian orphans. Their daughter Claira, now 2 1/2 years old, was adopted from Cambodia with a hole in her heart that was successfully treated here in the United States.

Pam and Randy Cope of Neosho, friends of the Karges’, adopted two children in Vietnam and started a nonprofit organization that helps orphanages and other shelters in Vietnam and Cambodia.

But even after successful adoptions and charity work, the Kargeses and the Copes have run into an unexpected barrier in their joint effort to help a Vietnamese orphan boy get urgent medical help in Missouri that he can’t get in Vietnam.

The U.S. government has refused to issue a medical visa or a humanitarian waiver for 6-year-old Tuan Van Cao. The couples are confused and frustrated, saying they have lined up private funding to cover treatment for a botched operation on the boy’s diseased left hip that left him with a potentially fatal bone infection.

Despite submitting written opinions from U.S. and Vietnamese doctors that Tuan needs urgent help that he cannot get in Vietnam, the families have been told to try the lengthy processing of international adoption, which can take a year or more.

“We’re kind of reeling right now,” said Karges, a physician. “I’m puzzled, because if you read the guidelines for humanitarian (waiver), Tuan fits.”

Tuan was admitted to a Ho Chi Minh City hospital Sunday for emergency treatment because the infection in his hip bone has started spreading, said Pam Cope, who first discovered Tuan’s case. He will have to undergo surgery that opens the bone to more infection, even though the hospital’s orthopedic surgeon has said the treatment is too risky to perform in Vietnam.

“Tuan’s case is black and white. He needs emergency medical treatment and we can give him free medical treatment here in the United States,” Cope said.

The experience is all too common, especially since Congress in 1997 changed the law to make immigration more difficult, said Roy Petty, an immigration lawyer in Rogers, Ark., who has handled several similar cases but is not involved in Tuan’s case.

Source: Associated Press, Mar. 3, 2006

bh