Jeremiah Cotto He wrote a letter to the President of the Republic a year ago. The boy from Sarandí del Yi wanted to tell him what it meant to live with hemophilia, a genetic disease that affects normal blood coagulation and that some 250 Uruguayans suffer fromand ask him to update the treatments for him, for his brother and for all the Uruguayans who suffer from the disease.
The message reached the hands of Luis Lacalle Pouwho called him on the phone and promised to study a solution, something that was finally announced in November by the Ministry of Public Health (MSP) —in February, the minors began receiving micizumab at the Pereira Rossell Hospital—, after Cotto, his family and representatives of the Association of Hemophiliacs of Uruguay met with the president in the Executive Tower.
On World Hemophilia Day and 365 days after that first letter, the boy returned to write a message thanking the president for the treatment that “would change our lives, not only for me, but for all children with hemophilia.” Cotto wrote that thanks to the new drug he can now carry a backpack, write “this letter without my finger joint bleeding,” play catch, ride a bike and “above all” attend class every day.
“The pain was left behind, the fears too. This is like starting over, I feel that I am happy,” Cotto shared in the letter that was released by his mother through social networks. “I never imagined that a president would listen to my request, to tell the truth it still seems that I am dreaming for everything we have achieved “continues the boy.
The letter that Cotto wrote this 2022.
In the text, he also thanks the Association of Hemophiliacs of Uruguay, as “they were always supporting so that everything became a reality.” The boy who began his new treatment at the Pereira Rossell (like 60 other children) also took the opportunity to make a new request: “my dream is that all hemophiliacs in Uruguay have better treatments,” he says, before asking that adults “can live like us, without pain”.
