Chris Eubank Jr, the IBO Super Middleweight Professional Boxer, now an official Ambassador for Chain of Hope, paid a visit to 7 year old Abuzar in the Cardiology Wing of London’s Evelina Children’s Hospital near Westminster Bridge.   He joins other celebrities, such as Arsenal legend, Robert Pires and Actor, Rupert Everett as official Ambassadors for the charity.

The Chain of Hope was founded in 1996 by world renowned pioneering cardiac surgeon, Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub for children suffering from heart disease, and does wonderful work to save the lives of countless children.

Chris Eubank Jr’s first role as an Ambassador was on Thursday 5th September, when the boxer visited 7-year-old Abuzar, from Pakistan who is recovering from heart surgery to fix a complex heart disease he had suffered from since birth.

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Abuzar is just one of the children whose surgery the Charity has funded at the Evelina Hospital in London.  Paediatric Cardiac Surgeon Mr Caner Salih performed the operation, with Chain of Hope’s Volunteer Medical Board Chairman, Professor Shakeel Qureshi as his cardiologist.

Chris Eubank Jr said ‘It’s humbling and amazing to see a kid who has no more than a week ago undergone heart surgery, walking around, smiling, happy. He is so brave and strong. It has been a surreal experience to meet him today and I’m going to be doing a lot more.’  Adding that meeting Abuzar had inspired him.  ‘These kids, they had to struggle and go through so much at a young age and they are still happy, still smiling. So, no matter how hard your life is, no matter how tough you think you got it, you meet kids like Abuzar and you can’t be unhappy.’

The boxer has been supporting the charity since 2017 when he attended the annual Gala Ball in London, where the charity raises valuable funds to help carry out its work treating children from war-torn and developing countries.  He said that helping children with heart-related defects who cannot afford it is such an important cause and is the reason why he has joined the charity as an Ambassador.  ‘I’ve been inspired to become an ambassador for Chain of Hope, because the sport I’m involved in is all about heart, it is the most important thing a fighter can have, a big heart, a strong heart, the will to keep going. So, watching these kids who were born with a hole in the heart go through life, struggling and then recover so well because of the help of Chain of Hope, that’s amazing to me'.  

The Evelina Children’s Hospital is a specialist NHS hospital, founded in 1869 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, and named after his wife Evelina, who had died, with their child, in premature labour.  In 2018 it was announced that the Duchess of Cambridge would become the hospital’s patron.