VIDEO The woman who gave seriously ill children a chance to live in the south-east of Romania/ “The burden we feel with the refusal of the authorities or people who don’t understand is much smaller”

“Toni was two years old, and my child was one year old. Still a little boy,” like that begins the story of Alina Pătrăhău, in Constanța, in 2010, when she gets involved in the rescue of Toni, a boy with cancer, with a serious diagnosis and a treatment that did not bear fruit. Alina was an entrepreneur at the time and did not know that, in fact, this is how the story of the “Give Wings” Association would begin.

Toni, now a teenager, is still fine, and Alina is 10 years away from the association’s first project: the pediatric oncology outpatient department, the first of its kind in the country. In order to build it, it was necessary to restructure an area of ​​the Constanța County Hospital, a lot of money, but first of all he had to overcome the indifference of the local authorities under which the hospital was located:

“They refused me, kicked me out. I didn’t quit. I said that I had to sensitize them somehow because I couldn’t believe that they didn’t care about children with cancer”, Alina remembers.

After months of negotiations and insistence to the authorities, the association begins setting up the ward for children with cancer. In 2014, close to the completion of the project, a dramatic case upsets everyone involved:

A baby in serious condition, to save whom Alina asked the doctor Cătălin Cîrstoveanu from the “Marie Curie” Hospital to make a trip to Constanța, dies under their eyes, even before the doctor arrives at the hospital:

“When I saw that baby… that bruised leg… I said we have to do something…”, recalls Alina Pătrăhău in tears about two twin brothers for whom she fought to save. One of them died under her gaze.

This is how the project to modernize the Intensive Care Unit for newborns was born, where babies from the south-east of Romania are brought. The highest mortality in the country, 50 cases per year, was thus reduced to 10 deaths in 2023.

This was followed by the development of the first registry that keeps track of children with cancer, specialized assistance at home for them and the first survival study of children with cancer, validated by European Commission specialists. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Give Wings” Association directed all funds in the fight against the coronavirus and distributed an impressive number of protective equipment to hospitals in Constanța county and the country.

In 2020, Alina Pătrăhău was awarded by the European Parliament with the European Citizen Award, and in 2022 Dăruiește Aripi was declared a public utility association by the Government, “with activity applied to innovation in onco-pediatric medical services”.

Now deploy TRAIL, an online platform similar to a virtual medical “office” where specialist doctors are brought into the same “room” with patients and relatives. Thus, at the case doctor’s invitation “enters” all the specialists needed for the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of a child with cancer.

Thus, when they leave the door of the office where they learned the news that they have a child with cancer, parents no longer have to start the journey to doctors who are sometimes in different counties or who have long-term appointments:

“Doctors must know that by using the platform they will gain essential time for children with cancer”, explains Alina.

But did he ever want to quit? How long will this last? And why does it continue?

“What does a 5-year-old child go through who no longer understands what his life was like before and what his life is now, who stays in hospitals and how hard it is for him and what pain he has… or what a mother goes through… And this hard which we feel, with the refusal of the authorities, with people who often do not understand or that everything goes very hard… it is much smaller than what these people live”.

So no, he won’t quit. He will not give up for the joy of parents who I get hope and humility from the strength of children facing cancer. And she says that she wouldn’t have succeeded, and she couldn’t continue without the “beautiful people” by her side, as she calls those from the “Give Wings” team.

Thus, the story of Alina Pătrăhău and Dăruiiște Aripi goes on.

Delia Dascălu contributed