Crowdfunding delivers new hospital

– At Romania’s new crowdfunded children’s cancer hospital, one-year-old Eric Ivan eagerly walked up and down the corridor, his mother holding his hands to steady him.

The bright, attractive building is a far cry from the drab facilities next door – and stands out as the first hospital in Romania financed exclusively through donations.

No less than 350 000 people and almost 8 000 companies contributed to it with the drive led by a civil group, frustrated by the inadequate facilities in the EU country with the lowest public spending on health.

“Romanians just need things to believe in,” said Oana Gheorghiu, who cofounded the Give Life Association that collected the money. For Carmen Uscatu, the group’s other cofounder, the new hospital is proof that “anything is possible”.

Out of the total raised, some €20 million came from two- and four-euro text messages, according to Give Life.

The new facility is a “slap in the face of politicians who didn’t want and couldn’t do anything for health care in this country”, actor and musician Tudor Chirila, one of its donors, wrote on Facebook.

Founded in 2012, Give Life helps build health infrastructure throughout the country. The Bucharest project was born in 2015 when the two women saw children with cancer and their families queueing outside a single toilet in the Marie Curie state hospital.

At first, the idea was just to modernise the oncology wards, but the project expanded into constructing a completely new building next to the old one.

Eric, diagnosed last year with neuroblastoma, started his treatment in the old hospital building before moving to the new one for his chemotherapy.

For Eric’s mom, 41-year-old Ildiz Ivan, this was a “radical change” from where she had had to take Eric for treatment before. “He has more space to run around, to play,” she said, seated in a bright playroom equipped with balls and a play kitchen.

With a capacity of 140 beds, the new building includes oncology, haemato-oncology, surgery, intensive care and neurosurgery units. It also has playrooms, a cinema, a radio studio and an observatory on the roof. And the Give Life organisation donated the whole facility to the state.

Haematologist Madalina Schmidt was among the doctors in the new hospital. The conditions “much better”, she said. And because the children and their parents are happier, interactions between doctors and patients are also easier, said Schmidt, 49.

In 2020, the nation of 19 million people had the lowest average health expenditure per inhabitant in the EU, according to the latest Eurostat data.