"Our lives are a race against
ourselves - we struggle to replace fear with hope, selfishness with
selflessness, ignorance with knowledge, apathy with action." Thus
testified Charity Sunshine Tilleman-Dick, granddaughter of Rep. Tom Lantos
and a pulmonary hypertension patient herself, before the House
Subcommittee on Health in support of the Pulmonary Hypertension Research
Act to be enacted by Congress.
Pulmonary Hypertension is a rare blood
vessel disorder of the lung in which the pressure in the pulmonary artery
(the blood vessel that leads from the heart to the lungs) rises above
normal levels and may become life threatening.
Pulmonary hypertension is frequently
misdiagnosed and has often progressed to late stage by the time it is
accurately diagnosed. It has been historically chronic and incurable with
a poor survival rate. However, new treatments are available which have
significantly improved prognosis.
Charity Tilleman-Dick studied voice at
the prestigious Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary.
Currently, she is attending the Johns Hopkins Peabody Conservatory in
Baltimore, MD, and is a regular guest star of the Embassy's cultural
events. She was diagnosed with the illness while studying at the Academy
last year.
The Embassy of Hungary attaches great
importance to raising awareness of the illness in close cooperation with
the Pulmonary Hypertension
Association (PHA).
Click
here to read Charity Tilleman-Dick's complete statement (PDF file)
