It had been a normal pregnancy. The ultrasounds gave no hint of what was to come. Indeed, everything suggested the baby’s development had been smooth and routine. Not until the baby was born did the family learn that something had gone terribly wrong.

When Baby Boy Gold entered the world last week in a community hospital, the hospital staff gasped in shock. He was born with bladder exstrophy —a condition so rare, it occurs only once in 40,000 live births. It is a severe deformity in which the bladder is outside the body, and it is as dangerous as it is rare. Without emergency care,
the child would not survive.

With the help of the patient advocacy and medical referral organization Refuah Helpline, and its dedicated director Mrs. Chana Landau, the family was swiftly directed to Dr. John P. Gearhart, Professor and Director of the Pediatric Urology unit at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Dr. Gearhart is the world’s leading authority in correcting bladder exstrophy.

But a challenge lay between Baby Boy Gold and Dr. Gearhart. Emergency medical transfers present complicated logistical obstacles. Mrs. Landau made another referral for the Golds: to Rabbi Isaac Leider of VitalOne.

VitalOne, a non-profit organization, specializes in providing emergency services at critical moments like the one the Golds faced.

With its network of service providers, it can secure emergency services, cut red tape, and get answers when critical seconds are ticking away. Rabbi Leider stepped in to arrange the transfer (he recalls it took some fifty phone calls from start to finish!). Just a two days old, Baby Boy Gold was airlifted from Westchester county airport to Baltimore on a Medivac critical care jet with a full medical team on board. Dr. Gearhart operated immediately and, Baruch Hashem, the surgery was successful.




Baby Boy Gold is recovering, but faces an uphill climb. He’ll spend a few weeks in Baltimore before returning to New York. And he will require additional surgeries in six months and then at age five. However, the prognosis is good for a full recovery and a normal, healthy life, with Hashem’s help.

*name has been changed