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International Kids Fund (IKF) was founded in response to an increasing number of desperate families from Latin America and the Caribbean who regularly showed up at Jackson Memorial Foundation seeking financial support for their sick children's medical treatment at Holtz Children's Hospital, which is prohibited by law to use publicly funded resources to care for non-residents of Miami-Dade County.
At first, Jackson Memorial Foundation assisted these families as best it could. They came and asked for help and the foundation directed them in their search for funds. But as the number of families increased, the foundation came to realize that a special organizational and financial infrastructure was needed to appropriately support these families.
By that time, it was 2001 and 6-year-old Jean Gabriel Senior had just arrived to Holtz Children's Hospital to battle leukemia. Jean Gabriel was in pain and critically ill. His family had exhausted all medical possibilities in their home country, the Dominican Republic, and could not afford to pay for Jean Gabriel's medical care in the United States.
Rather than ignoring his plight and permitting him to suffer, the hospital's administrators, physicians and benefactors united with Jackson Memorial Foundation to establish IKF, not only to help Jean Gabriel, but all foreign children who arrive at Holtz seeking medical treatments that are not available in their home countries and that their desperate families cannot afford.
On January 9, 2002, scarcely days before his final treatment, Jean Gabriel unexpectedly passed away. IKF dedicates its ongoing efforts to his memory. Jean Gabriel's time on earth was short, but thanks to him, IKF shines as a beacon of hope for the countless numbers of critically ill children for whom expert medical treatment is not available in their country of origin.
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