Bilqis' mother, Dewi Farida, mourning the 19-month old,
who died before she could reach the required weight for surgery
Bilqis Passa, whose case had sparked an outpouring of sympathy nationwide, succumbed to respiratory failure at about 3 p.m. on Saturday in Dr. Kariadi Hospital in Semarang, where she was awaiting a liver transplant.
Bilqis’ father, 33-year-old Donny Passa, told that more than Rp 2 billion ($222,000) had been raised through the Facebook group Bilqis Love Coins Group, set up on Christmas Day by Bilqis’ uncle to raise funds for her operation.
“We plan to make a foundation called ‘Bilqis Love Coins Group’ from the donation,” Donny said. “We would like to help other children who have diseases like Bilqis’ and also others who need donations for health conditions.”
The unique fund-raising effort of the group used the technology of Facebook to collect small donations, often in the form of coins.
Donny said that though the foundation had not yet been established, the family has already used some of the money to help other families.
Donny said he and his wife had come to terms with Bilqis’ death.
“This is what God has decided,” he said. “Bilqis is an incredible child. I’ve never thought that she was born to get as much attention from so many people.”
On Sunday, hundreds of people attended her funeral and visited her house in Kramat Sentiong, Central Jakarta, many leaving flowers.
Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih came to the house on Saturday night after Bilqis’ body arrived from the hospital in Semarang.
Bilqis had been hospitalized since Feb. 2, awaiting the liver transplant that could have saved her life. Biliary atresia is a rare, life-threatening disease that damages the liver in newborns.
Her mother, Dewi Farida, was ready to donate her liver, and had worked out details of the transplant with an international team of medical experts. According to Yulianto, chief of the liver-transplant surgery team at Karyadi Hospital, the team was just waiting for Bilqis to reach a minimum weight of 9 kilograms before she could undergo surgery.
“Actually, Bilqis had time to reach that ideal weight but it went down to 8.5 kilograms after she was attacked by a variety of dangerous bacteria,” he explained, adding that Bilqis weighed 7.8 kilograms when she died.
AG Soemantri, head of the medical team handling Bilqis’ case, said in a press release on Saturday that patients with biliary atresia are prone to attacks by klebsiella pneumonia and acinetobacter baumannii bacteria, which attack the lungs, and serratia marcescens bacteria, which attacks the blood.
“Forty percent of patients with biliary atresia are attacked. And, in the case of Bilqis, she was attacked by all three in a row, causing her to stop breathing,” Soemantri said.
