Today we’ll be talking about a successful
\nproject that received a prize at the 2017 Structural Funds Awards Gala. The
\nproject is called 100 Hearts for 100 Children and obtained the 2nd
\nplace in a special category for projects that support professional training.
\nThanks to this project, a new medical specialisation is now available for
\nresident doctors in Romania since 2016, namely paediatric cardiology. Not to
\nmention that the project is also saving lives. Cristian Grassu is a secretary
\nof state within the Health Ministry and he told us about the cooperation
\nbetween the Romanian state institutions and the European ones in implementing
\nprojects in the healthcare field:<\/p>\n
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\n
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Important efforts are being made, we have
\nlooked for help and funding in many places, and the European Commission has
\nalways been there to help, especially in this mandate. This project is proof
\nthat a lot can also be done in Romania with the help of European funds and this
\nis not the only example. Some projects have received more funds, others less,
\nsome even rely on volunteers, but all of them have the same goal, namely to
\nsave more lives and to cure more patients. At present, Romania’s priority is
\nthe infrastructure, and this is one of the main reasons why we are not yet
\nsatisfied with the quality of health services or, for that matter, with the
\nquantity of services we receive. We do have an infrastructure problem: the last
\npublic hospital to be built in Romania was in 1981 and the only medical
\nbuilding with a medical purpose to be built in the meantime has been in Iasi.
\nAll the other hospitals were built in the 1970s and even earlier, some are even
\nhistorical monuments.<\/p>\n
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Physician and journalist Vlad Mixich has
\nidentified one of the paradoxes facing Romania:<\/p>\n
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Congenital heart defects are one of the causes
\nof infant mortality. Infant mortality comes up in the Romanian media at least
\nonce a year, whenever there’s some new statistics or article showing how bad
\nthings are in the Romanian healthcare system. And this is where the paradox
\nlies. Indeed, Romania has the highest infant mortality rate in the European
\nUnion, but at the same time, the effort to reduce infant mortality that began
\nin 1990 has been one of the most successful endeavours in Romanian medicine.
\nRomania has seen the fastest dropping rate of infant mortality in the world.
\nThe drop was very fast in a very short time. Although we are still in the last
\nplace in the classification, things are improving much faster than in other countries
\nfaced with this problem.<\/p>\n
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\n
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The situation has improved also thanks to the
\nproject 100 Hearts for 100 Children. The manager of the Institute of
\nCardiovascular Diseases in Iasi, Professor Grigore Tinica has explained that
\nthe Institute agreed to participate in this European project if a number of
\nchildren were also to benefit from surgery. The project provided specialist
\ntraining programmes abroad for all categories of medical staff working in the
\nsensitive domain of paediatric cardiovascular surgery. The initial target was
\n100 surgeries but this figure has been exceeded by now. Professor Tinica
\nexplains:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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Between 1,500-2,000 children with congenital
\nheart defects are born in Romania every year. 800 or 900 need surgery in the
\nfirst year of life, but only 250 or 300 surgeries are performed at the moment.
\nSo, many of them don’t get the surgery they need, and they grow up, turn 10,
\n12, 15 or even become adults and still haven’t undergone the procedure. That’s
\nabout 1,000 cases of congenital heart defects that need operation in Romania.
\nThere are several hospitals that perform this type of surgery. Paediatric
\ncardiovascular surgery is much more difficult than the other type of surgery
\nbecause a young child is a completely different universe.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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While the ministry can draw up policies, access
\nfunds and try to change mentalities, it’s the people in the front line, the
\ndoctors, the nurses, the therapists and the kinetotherapists, who are
\nimplementing the projects. They are sometimes joined by civil society representatives.
\nThe Inima Copiilor Association is one such example. The association supports
\nchildren with medical problems, especially children with heart conditions.
\nAlexandru Popa, the association’s president, has explained:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
We have decided to support heart surgery
\nbecause in 2006, when the association was set up, congenital heart disease was
\nthe main cause of non-accidental child mortality. Things have changed somehow,
\nbut not completely, and there are still very many children who die of heart
\ndisease because they are not diagnosed in time, because they are not operated
\non and because their parents don’t know where to take them. We hope this
\nsituation will change. We’ve tried to help develop these centres instead of
\nfocusing on individual cases, even if we’re always being asked for help and
\nit’s difficult to say no. Our association has raised over 4 million euros from
\nsponsorships and private donations, funds which have went to infrastructure
\nprojects and have been injected into the public healthcare system. We want to
\ncontinue.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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This project is definitely a success, given
\nthat surgery is currently performed on children as young as two weeks, but
\nthere is much more that needs to be done, as all our interlocutors have
\nemphasised.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This EU-funded award-winning project helps children born with heart defects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":142707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[43488,43682],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-142706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-child-mortality","tag-heart-surgery"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n