The increase in the number of cancer cases in
\nRomania in recent years has also affected children. What makes things worse in
\nchildren’s case is when they have to go through this alone. Children’s
\nhospitals in Romania, few in number and usually very crowded, are also home to
\nan increasing number of infants and children who are either abandoned or are
\nrarely visited by their relatives or who have to stay in hospital for many
\nmonths. Although the medical staff do their best to help them, children often
\nmiss their parents’ affection, which is sometimes critical in their healing. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In order to make up for the missing affection,
\nthe Children’s Heart Association started a project entitled No Child Alone in
\nHospital. The initiative belongs to Adelina Toncean and the project is
\ncurrently being implemented at the Maria Sklodowska Curie Children’s Clinical
\nEmergency Hospital in Bucharest. Adelina Toncean explains: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I’m a volunteer in the neonatal intensive care
\nunit. I began my volunteering activity after I took two kids with serious
\nmedical conditions in foster care. Unfortunately, one of them has not made it.
\nThe other one was left alone in hospital for one year and a half. He has now
\nrecovered from a medical point of view, but the trauma of being left alone is
\nstill visible. I have always said to myself that, maybe one day, there will
\nmore of us volunteering to spend time with kids in hospital. At present, there
\nare 3,200 people who have signed up for the project, all of whom want the same
\nthing: to help children left alone in hospital. We have named the project No
\nChild Alone in Hospital in order to create a functional model that can be used
\nanywhere else.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Adelina Toncean has kept many children in her
\narms, has fed them and helped them during treatments and the most difficult
\nperiods of their illness. She grew attached to each and every one of them, and
\non the day when we spoke to her, one of the children she was taking care of was
\ngoing through some bad moments. Adelina Toncean: <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
It’s one of the children I have fed every day.
\nI have visited David every day. First I fed him with a syringe and then with a
\nfeeding bottle. And today I saw him again in hospital. It happened to him what
\nusually happens to lonely children: they are discharged from hospital and go
\nhome, but come back because they don’t feel well. I saw him again being fed
\nthrough a tube, sick with measles. Then there is another child who hasn’t have
\nmuch time left in this world, which is a very sad time for volunteers and the
\nhospital staff.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
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\n
<\/p>\n
Lots of people have already volunteered to be
\npart of the programme, from young people over 15 years of age to elderly people
\nwith grandchildren of their own. The minimal requirements for being accepted
\ninto the programme are for the volunteers to have no communicable diseases and
\nto attend a training session teaching them how they can help in the intensive
\ncare ward and preparing them for coping with a place where the thin line
\nbetween life and death may be crossed in any moment. Adelina Toncean tells us
\nthat the training is done with the help of Petruta:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Petruta is a manikin used for simulation. It
\nlooks just like a doll weighing as much as a newborn, and has a backbone and
\ncollarbone, and the head needs to be properly supported, just as with
\nnewly-born children. Petruta is supposed to resemble as much as possible the
\nstate of the children in our wards: it’s fed through a tube, it has catheters,
\ncannulas, etc. It helps volunteers to learn, without the fear of harming the
\nchildren, how babies can be touched, what the most important forms of touch
\nare, and how to hold them, because all babies need to be held. This is what our
\nreality looks like: an intubated baby in the arms of someone who allows them to
\nfall asleep listening to somebody’s heartbeat instead of listening to a
\nmachine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Andrada Constantiniuc is one of the volunteers
\nwho have trained with Petruta:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
I have volunteered for a long time in other
\ncities, and when I came to Bucharest I tried to find something that would suit
\nmy interests. When I read an article about this project, I immediately realised
\nthat this is where I belong. At the Marie Curie Intensive Care ward there are
\nseveral babies without parents and who are always alone, and for this reason
\nthey recover a lot slower. Our role is to spend time with them, to help the
\nhealthcare staff feed them, because some babies take as long as one hour to
\ndrink 100 ml of milk, and simply to be with them. A child that feels physical,
\nhuman touch recovers a lot quicker, their brain develops a lot faster and they
\nwant to live, unlike those who are lonely and just give up the fight.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
Because a lot of volunteers are enrolled in the
\nprogramme, each of them spends there 2-3 hours a week, particularly during meal
\ntimes. But this is enough for them to feel that they have received something in
\nreturn. Andrada Constantiniuc:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n
In principle, it’s not just the children that
\nbenefit from this, but the volunteers as well. It makes you see what the truly
\nimportant things are in life, and it helps you to no longer feel stressed by
\nminor problems.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The increase in the number of cancer cases in Romania has also affected children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":142792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42997],"tags":[34975,29948],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-142791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-today","tag-cancer","tag-children"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n