Cash in hand, family can breathe easier

Donations ensure Pakistani girl will be on list for lung transplant

Monday morning, after 9-year-old Maira Junaid’s photo appeared on the front page of the Houston Chronicle under the headline “Sick girl’s family waiting to exhale,” donations began to trickle in. Dozens of them: $10. $20. $100.

And then, the big one: On Tuesday, a reader who wants to remain anonymous came to see Maira at Texas Children’s Hospital and pledged a sixfigure donation, pushing her family beyond their $650,000 fundraising goal and ensuring she’ll at least have a shot at a lifesaving lung transplant.

Maira’s father, Junaid Iqbal, was stunned.

“It’s amazing,” Iqbal said, struggling to find words to describe his gratitude. “We are good now. It is going to be OK.”

Iqbal and his wife brought Maira to Houston from their home in Pakistan more than a year ago. She’d been born with cystic fibrosis and was in need of a double lung transplant to save her life, an operation that couldn’t be done in their home country. Texas Children’s is one of a handful of U.S. hospitals that perform pediatric lung transplants. But to get her on the waiting list in the U.S., where they have no health insurance, Maira’s parents had to raise enough money to pay in advance for the cost of the operation and years’ worth of follow-up treatments.

After fundraising for several months, they’d secured nearly $400,000 by Monday morning, but the pace had slowed since the holidays. Within 24 hours of the Chronicle story, they’d exceeded their goal.

“We can’t express our feeling,” Maira’s mother, Sumera, wrote on a Facebook page set up to share updates on her progress. “We have to mention that we receive help from all over the world.”

Getting on the transplant waiting list is no guarantee Maira will get new lungs. Only about 100 pediatric lung transplants are performed each year, with the need far outpacing the availability of donor organs. But with the money in hand, Maira will at least have a chance.

Iqbal said he believes it will happen, thanks largely to the generosity of a city he’s grown to love.

“Doctors tell her she’s a miracle girl,” Iqbal said. “I tell her she’s a daughter of Houston.”

Elizabeth Conley / Houston Chronicle Maira Junaid, 9, sits in her Texas Children’s hospital room. One of her lungs collapsed due to cystic fibrosis, and she needs a transplant.