Please stop the Georgia Pediatric Program (GAPP) and Georgia Department of Community Health in their unfathomable failure to support medically fragile children. 

Seven-year-old, JD, has Mitochondrial Disease, severe global developmental delay, hypotonia and mental retardation. He is 100% dependent on caregivers, as he cannot walk, talk, eat, drink, sit-up, roll over or even lift his head. He is wheel chair bound and tube-fed.  His team of doctors prescribe 56 hours of in-home, skilled nursing care for him per week to assist with his daily care.  GAPP (the state of Georgia program designed to provide nursing assistance for children like JD) granted him 8 hours per week several months ago and recently reduced that to TWO HOURS PER WEEK-, despite no change in JD's condition. 

Regardless of JD's physicians’ recommendations of 56 in-home nursing hours per week -  the state, who has never seen or met JD - classified his condition as "not so inherently complex to require” the nursing care his team of doctors deem necessary.

 The majority of private insurance companies, including JD's, do not cover in home private duty nursing care, forcing families to seek help from the state.  Why is it so very hard for families with medically fragile children to qualify/afford in-home nursing care? Why is the Department of Community Health denying care to these vulnerable children? Why are physicians being ignored? The battle that so many families are fighting to receive the care they deserve, and by state law are entitled to, is unbearable. 

 Please sign this petition and help JD and the many other children who are unjustly slipping through the cracks of this very broken system.