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Applying communication technology to human problems is the keystone of WiRED's work. Dr. Gary Selnow, who had just completed a week-long, Internet training session in Pristina, had an idea. Why not hook a video cam to the web-connected computers and arrange for two-way sight and sound communication with the Western hospitals? That way, the kids sent away for treatment, could see their parents and receive words of comfort and reassurance during their often-long and difficult treatments.
"Hello, my son, how are you?"
These words were first spoken in the Pristina Library by a Kosovar father who had not seen his son, a cancer patient in Italy, for seven months. By the magic of the Internet, he and his family were heard in their native Albanian tongue and seen on a color monitor a thousand miles away by a very happy 12-year old. Wearing a surgical cap over his hairless head, Blerim Leku smiled and broke into a laugh. As he began his animated conversation in Albanian--hardly a language heard in Pisa--he was home again, transported to Pristina, seeing his parents, his grandfather, his siblings.
The doctors had agreed to allow each child 15-minutes on-line. They said the boys' chemotherapy was physically taxing, and a longer session might wear them down. The doctors in Pisa must have seen the extraordinary reaction of the children, because they waived the 15-minute restriction, later telling us it was clear to them that the conversation was a powerful therapy.
From first to last, Blerim's face told the story, and no one in Pristina missed it.
Read more about the Video Visit Program:
A Journey Across The Miles: Three Boys Reunited with Their Families
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