Ittai was born on Friday the 28/5/2010, he was healthy beautiful baby. We as a family had the happiest weekend ever.

Then on Monday we were told to do an ultrasound for his head, which showed some abnormalities.

Today Ittai is 21 month old and he has profound developmental delay due to severe Cerebral Palsy and Cortical visual impairment. He can’t eat solid foods and has difficulties swallowing. He has trouble falling asleep and suffers from severe insomnia. He is unable to speak and we are trying to find new ways for him to communicate with us.

The reason for Ittai’s disability is a congenital CMV infection. In healthy people, CMV causes nothing more than a flu-like illness that lasts a few days. However, if contracted congenitally it can cause serious abnormalities.

At 3 weeks of age an MRI was performed on Ittai’s head and it was confirmed that he has several lesions in his brain. We were told that he probably has brain damage and that nothing can be done. We should only wait and see what happens and treat any symptoms that appear.

Today modern medicine can only provide Ittai with various therapies to help ease his pain and help with daily tasks.

The only treatment that can repair damaged cells is a Stem Cell treatment. In many countries , including Australia, this treatment is surrounded with religions and ethical controversy. The Scientists can’t decide between them mainly because there is not enough data collected from trials, which are banned due to same controversy or luck of funds.

However everyone agrees that Stem cells are capable of regenerating new healthy cells that could potentially be used to replace damaged or diseased cells occurring in wide variety of pathologies.  Lately there been some trials to treat Children with Cerebral Palsy which are conducted at Monash University in Melbourne, but not everyone can enter those trials as they are limited by age and other selection criteria.

In China, at the Beijing Puhua International Hospital doctors offer a variety of treatments with several types of stem cells. We have been in contact with them for the last 6 month. After carefully evaluating Ittai’s medical reports and watching his videos they proposed a treatment plan that potentially will repair some damage to Ittai’s brain that will resolve some of his physical disabilities.

We hope that since he is very young and his brain is still developing there is a high chance of success and the only risks are the same as with any medical procedure.

Please help Ittai go to China.