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A Dying Little Girl’s Smile Rallies The Martial Arts Community
By Adam Underhill | December 20, 2010
Last Friday, Adam Underhill posted the story of Mr. Rattanachai Jadngooluem, a Muay Thai instructor who has helped trained many professional MMA fighters. (You can read the story below in the original post.) Upon hearing the story, UFC President Dana White stepped up to the plate and is now helping out the Jagngooleum family. Dana White funds liver transplant for trainer’s daughter. A happy ending.
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Originally posted on December 17, 2010.
Our friend Adam Underhill wrote this post. His e-mail is here. Reminder: As with all charitable endeavors, do your research and verify what you are reading and the credibility of who you are donating money to.
The Tiger Muay Thai camp in Phuket is well known for it’s high class Muay Thai and mixed martial arts training, but now it will be famous for it’s community who have joined forces together to save a little girl’s life.
Kru Nai (Mr. Rattanachai Jadngooluem) is one of the Muay Thai trainers at the camp and is no stranger to a challenge. Kru Nai has an impressive fighting record of 3 Lumpinee Champion wins at 3 weight classes and also World Muay Thai Champion title. However this time Kru Nai has a fight for life that he just can’t win on his own.
His 7-month old daughter, Tuptim, has been diagnosed with a biliary obstruction. Without adequate medical assistance from sadly overrun government hospitals, the condition has now been diagnosed as critical. The only option for Tuptim is a liver transplant as the liver has been damaged beyond repair. Tuptim has now been admitted into ICU as she is bleeding internally. Doctors are worried that she will die before the New Year without immediate medical attention.
The problem is the price. The costs are high starting at 1.5 million Thai Baht or around $50,000. Other costs are involved after the surgery due to the immunosuppressant drugs that each child needs for many years to follow. The bill for drugs for just one year runs in to tens of thousands of dollars. This means that this type of surgery is just not possible for the majority of Thai people. The average salary in Thailand is somewhere between $150 and $300 per month.
“The family have now been told that Tuptim needs to be operated on within the month as her case is now critical. I guess we don’t have much time to get the ball rolling. It may not be an easy task to raise $50,000 plus in four weeks but I am sure that we can do it, we just need your help.” –Grainne Farrell, MD for Lotus Medical International.
Over the next few days Grainne Farrell and Will Elliott (Tiger Muay Thai) will look in to setting up proper financial services to receive money for the baby. Luke Richmond, who runs OLAC Adventures (a non-profit organization) has offered to take charity payments from corporations through his charity. For other smaller donations a Paypal account has been set up. Due to the time constraints, this payment method was the quickest available and the team are working a better solution, but time is not on their side.
This is an appeal from the FightOpinion team to please give Kru Nai and Tuptim whatever you can. This season is a time for giving and to help those in need… so let’s try to help this little girl and give her the gift of life this Christmas.
UPDATE: In the past 12 hours the fund has received close to $2000.00 in donations, so lets keep the ball rolling!
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