- The Vodafone Romania Foundation doubles this amount, with funds of over 30,000 lei to be used for the purchase of a video-laryngoscope
- The second stage of the construction works at the new section is completed
Bucharest, March 28, 2018 – More than 15,000 lei have been collected at this year’s edition of the Family Run race at the Sand Marathon Festival, organized on the beach of Mamaia Resort, for the modernization of the Newborn intensive care unit of the Emergency Hospital in Constanta. The Vodafone Romania Foundation will double this amount, with the total funds of 30,000 lei to be used for the purchase of a videolaringoscope for the newborn ICU.
The collection of this sum has coincided with another important moment of the modernization project: the completion of the second stage of the construction works, during which the plumbing facilities were completely rehabilitated and the steel frames were mounted for the sliding doors that will allow quick access to the hospital rooms. Among the actions planned for the next project stage are the finishing of the exterior steel structure of the building, the mounting of the electrical installations in the rooms and of an ultramodern communication system for the medical staff of the department.
The money collected from the marathon come from the enrollment fees, which were paid by about 450 runners, children and their parents, who participated in the Family Run race. The videolaryngoscope is to be used for difficult intubations on children weighing less than normal or children born with congenital malformations, all hospitalized in the new section, upgraded by the project funded by the Vodafone Foundation Romania and implemented in partnership with associations Give Wings and Children’s Heart.
The participants in the Family Run race included members of the Constanta county community and inhabitants in the region, as well as volunteers, employees of Vodafone Romania SA. This year’s Sand Marathon edition, organized by the Sanasport Sports Association, is the third edition providing support to the performance of the project dedicated to newborns suffering from serious afflictions, admitted at the Constanta Emergency Hospital.
At the Newborn intensive care unit of the Constanta County Hospital, 1,000 children with medical problems are treated each year, both from Constanta county and from three other counties in the south-eastern part of the country: Tulcea, Ialomita and Calaraşi. In this region, infant mortality is the highest in the country and three times higher than in Europe.
The new ICU will be equipped with state-of-the-art medical equipment and modern facilities, special spaces for parents and for the medical staff as well as consultation rooms. The section will also be fitted with a telemedicine solution that will allow secure transmission in real-time of images and medical parameters and the remote monitoring of patients’ vital signs.
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 has 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
