When illness forced thirty-four-year-old Fabiana Ebani—a Brazilian nurse, wife, and mother—to quit her job, she sought answers from all the doctors she knew. But her diagnosis of severe cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease, was only the beginning of her medical ordeal.
Ebani needed a heart transplant to survive. So in March 2016, she traveled 200 kilometers from her home in Macaé to Rio de Janeiro to be hospitalized at CopaStar. No heart was immediately available, and her condition deteriorated; at one point, she suffered six heart attacks in a 24-hour period. To keep her alive, CopaStar’s medical team connected her to an artificial heart for 53 days. The prolonged use of this technology, and the care of the hospital’s highly trained specialists, helped Elbani survive until her eventual—successful—heart transplant.
At that time, CopaStar was a relatively new facility—and the only local hospital in the state that could address complex medical conditions. A husband and wife (both medical doctors) founded Rede d’Or, the hospital’s holding company, 41 years ago, specifically to provide advanced care administered by highly qualified professionals in areas traditionally lacking good hospitals. Now, Rede d’Or is a network of hospitals and the largest independent operator of hospitals in Brazil, with 37 hospitals and 5,200 operational beds.
Since 2010, IFC has provided Rede d’Or with over $500 million of financing—including $285 million mobilized from other investors—so it could add hospital beds and expand the network, with an eye toward providing specialized care and advanced medical technology to underserved areas. The company continues to expand to better serve the needs of Brazilians.
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