Mater Heart Run targets Sh70m

NAIROBI: The Mater Heart Run, which raises funds to cover expenses for heart operations on deserving children and the unfortunate in society, is aiming to net Sh70 million this year.

“We have raised our target by Sh6 million from the Sh64 million we managed to raise last year,” Boniface Muli, the event’s marketing director, said Tuesday.

Mr Muli was speaking at an event held at the Standard Group’s offices on Mombasa Road where he led a group that included beneficiaries from last year’s Mater Heart Run to present audited accounts and officially request for sponsorship from the Standard Group for the 2015 event.

The Standard Group is one of the major sponsors of the charity run.

“We are very happy about our relationship and we welcome you home,” Francis Munywoki, the Standard Group’s managing director for Print Operations, told the visiting group.

Mr Munywoki, who was representing Standard Group’s CEO Sam Shollei, said the company would sponsor the event to ensure that the lives of children suffering from heart problems were changed.

CONSIDER PROPOSAL

He said Standard Group would consider a proposal from the event organisers to include live coverage of the event by KTN.

Since the first open heart surgery in 1996, Mater Hospital has managed to treat, either through surgery or interventional cardiac catheterisation, more than 2,500 patients in the Mater Cardiac Programme that is supported by donations obtained during the run.

“Last year, from the Sh64 million raised, we managed to carry out 229 open heart operations on children and over 18,000 were screened through the free cardiac outreach camps in various parts of the country,” said Alexander Irungu, Mater Hospital’s director of operations and administration.

Eight-year-old Brian Wachira, a beneficiary of the event, narrated how the programme had changed his life.

“I could not walk, go to school or play. I took medicine daily but my situation never improved. I got lucky when I was taken to Mater for open heart surgery. I can now ride a bike and go to school without feeling tired,” he said.