Dear friends,

We continue having a very positive feedback from people visiting our website; we have registered so far 2.830 visits. In terms of donations, we have currently a balance of 12.840 EUR collected, which unfortunately is not a big increase since last posting. Nevertheless, we have some excellent news and hope to give our campaign a new boost in the coming weeks.

We are glad to announce that we have received from Fundació FC Barcelona a football shirt signed by star Leo Messi that will be auctioned to the benefit of Sümeyye (see picture in gallery). At this point, we want to take the opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to FC Barcelona’s foundation and to Leo Messi for their interest and their support to our campaign. Messi’s generosity and his involvement in children-related projects is well known and certainly makes him an extraordinary person on top of being probably the best player in football history. A very special thank you deserves Pilar Guinovart from FC Barcelona foundation’s Infancy Care Programme for her quick and friendly response to our request for help and for the great job she and her colleagues do every day and the work the foundation develops. Although we cannot estimate the value the shirt can reach, we will soon inform you about the auction details in case you have interest to bid or just want to follow up.

Sümeyye continues showing a good progress. The physiotherapy treatment at Nesem Fizik ve Rehabilitasyon Merkezi is ongoing according to schedule, already being paid to 50% by the Turkish public health system. Also, an anonymous family has recently offered to cover the cost of the next 2 months of the psychological treatment Sümeyye is receiving at Ribem Risky Baby Development Center once per week. She is still getting her regular medication including the Cortexin injections. Next check planned with Dr.Burak Tatlı will be end of March. Sümeyye is successfully taking semi-solid alimentation 3 times per day; a new swallow test will be performed in the course of February to evaluate if the feeding tube can be removed. For the moment, the tube she had inserted into the gall bladder has been removed, which is another good sign. The doctors seem to be very satisfied with Sümeyye’s development and expect the progress to continue being positive.

We will get back to you soon with new information.

Thanks and all the best,

Rafa & Team