- The action is part of the fundraising campaign that comes to add to the 1.1 million EUR investment announced by the Vodafone Romania Foundation
- Dr. Cătălin Cîrstoveanu, Head of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit from Marie Curie Hospital in Bucharest teamed up with Dr. Livia Frăţiman, Head of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit from Constanţa County Hospital
- More than 740 donors and volunteers involved in supporting the project
Bucharest, July 2, 2018 – Over 117,000 RON were collected at the 2018 edition of the Swimathon Bucharest swimming contest organized at the Dinamo Olympic Pool for the renovation and endowment of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit of the Constanta Emergency Hospital. In total, over 740 donors and volunteers got involved in this initiative: 30 swimmers participated in the fundraising swimming competition and over 700 people donated money to the project. The teams that swam for the cause of the Constanta Newborn Unit included Dr. Cătălin Cîrtstoveanu, Head of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit of Marie Curie Hospital in Bucharest, and his son, along with dr. Livia Frățiman, Head of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit of Constanta County Hospital, 15 volunteers, involved in this initiative by the Vodafone Romania Foundation (employees of Vodafone Romania, Vodafone Romania Technology and Vodafone Shared Services Romania), as well as volunteers mobilized by the Give Wings and the Children’s Heart associations, in their capacity as project partners.
The funds raised at the Swimathon competition by the teams of swimmers will be added to the 1.1 million EUR investment announced by the Vodafone Romania Foundation at its annual conference “Connecting for Good”. The buget invested by the foundation will provide for most of the 1.5 million EUR estimated costs necessary for the renovation of the hospital unit.
Started in August 2017, the Newborn Intensive Care Unit renovation project at Constanta County Hospital is currently underway. Upon the launch of this project in 2016, the Foundation had announced that the necessary budget, estimated at 1.3 million EUR, was going to be raised via a donation and sponsorship campaign run by the two partners in project, i.e. the associations Daruieste Aripi and Inima Copiilor, while the Foundation was going to double the funds so raised. Following an estimated increase of 200,000 EUR of the initial project budget, resulting mainly from unforeseen additional works, the Vodafone Romania Foundation has announced, at the above mentioned conference, its 1.1 million EUR investment in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Constanta County Hospital.
The Newborn Intensive Care Unit of the Constanta County Hospital treats 1,000 sick infants annually. The admitted children come from Constanta and three other counties from South-Eastern Romania, namely from Tulcea, Ialomița and Călărași. In this part of the country, infant mortality rate is the highest in the Romania and three times the European average.
The new unit will be equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment and facilities, with special rooms for parents and for the medical staff, as well as various consultation rooms. The unit will also be fitted with a telemedicine solution that will allow secure, real-time transmission of medical images and parameters and the remote monitoring of the patients’ vital signs.
The teams mobilized by the Vodafone Romania Foundation for the Swimathon competition come to add to the more than 630 volunteers who have participated since the beginning of this year in various volunteering actions organized by the Foundation. Volunteering is one of the four strategic directions of involvement of the Vodafone Romania Foundation, besides healthcare, education and social services.
The Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian nongovernmental charitable organization, established in 1998, which operates separately and independently from the Vodafone Romania SA’s business. During its 20 years of activity, Vodafone Romania Foundation has funded 1,104 programs run by 706 NGOs throughout the country, in the fields of healthcare, education and social services. These projects had a total of 2.7 million beneficiaries – children, young and old people and physically, socially or economically disadvantaged people. So far, Vodafone Romania has invested over 28 million euros in projects run by nonprofit partner organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programs are available at fundatia-vodafone.ro, http://jurnaldebine.fundatia-vodafone.ro/ and www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone
The “Give Wings” Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting charitable projects that can really contribute the proper treatment of patients in the Romanian public healthcare system. The Association seeks to implement projects in the healthcare field, aimed at improving patients’ healing and survival chances. The Association built the Department of Pediatric Onco-hematology and Rheumatology at Constanta County Hospital, which handles the diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of sick children from the South-East region of Romania. More details are available at http://www.daruiestearipi.ro/ and https://www.facebook.com/AsociatiaDaruiesteAripi/.
The Children’s Heart Association has been helping children with serious illnesses, especially heart conditions, since 2006. The Association has built the most up-to-date medical facility in the whole Romanian public healthcare system, at the Marie Curie Hospital: the Center for Excellence in Cardiac Surgery (a project worth over 3,5 million Euro, of which 1,6 million Euro were collected and invested by the Children’s Heart Association alone) and the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (a project worth more than 2,1 million Euro, developed with the support of the Vodafone Romania Foundation, to which the Children’s Heart Association’s contribution amounted to over 700,000 Euros), which is to be fitted this year with the first breast milk bank ever built in Romania. The Association has also renovated at the same hospital the departments of cardiology and neurosurgery, has refurbished and equipped the neurosurgery theater and is continuing to support, including financially, all these hospital wards, thus helping dozens of young patients in need of medical care. More details are available at http://www.inimacopiilor.ro/ and https://www.facebook.com/AsociatiaInimaCopiilor
