Association P.A.V.E.L. e-mail: pavel_romania@hotmail.com
Romania with its most outstanding nature and soil (which many countries would envy) with both knowledge and skills in various domains, with its Christian orthodox faith that could move mountains, still fails to feed, shelter and care for its over 22 million people.
Romania is a challenge for those who live there and those who come and go - visiting tourists or working volunteers helping to build a Romanian society. The challenge consists in dealing philosophically and practically with the differences between intentions and outcome, between the rich and the poor, between the decision makers and the ordinary citizens, between those who have the power to change the society for the better and those who hope for the change. In 1989 many walls fell, crushing ideologies and mentalities, changing passivity into vitally needed social actions. After ten years of democracy, Romania is still in search of its identity.
To this day, Romania's problem to take care of its children remains a public issue. The response from western Europe was enormous and voluntary aid efforts by individuals, by newly formed or established charities brought a flood of aid to this country to assist children in their desperate position.
Ten years have gone by. Today there are far less charities and voluntary efforts involved, but those who remained have become better organized, more competent and certainly more determined to stay and work until the problems are gone. Assisted in many places by western voluntary efforts, the situation for children improved in many respects such as housing, food and education.
Unfortunately there are also downsides such as a powerful economic recession, problems of malnutrition and failure of paying the staff. Other downsides remain strictly clear: namely the continued poverty which forces ordinary Romanians into a situation where they hardly can cope with daily life. Followed by the deterioration of their health, with poor support from the health and social care services.
There are major difficulties in pediatric oncology. Some of them are:
Totally insufficient funding from the national health budget, very often insufficient medication supplies, poor supportive care due to low standards of blood products and modern antibiotics as well as immunoglobulines or antiviral and antimycotic drugs. Often there are no cytogenetic or molecular biology laboratories. And there is a shortage of medical equipment, instruments for analysis or any modern apparatus. Hygienic, sanitary and nutritional circumstances are bad and standard of living is low.
Yet there are a lot of doctors and medical personnel well educated and trained who, despite these circumstances try heroically to save the lives of? The national Center of Statistics registered in the year 1997 482 new the small patients.
Children with cancer or leukemia in Romania don't have the same chances for cure as children in better equipped countries. The recovery rate is very low - less than 20%. How much pain is hiding behind this number? The National Center of Statistics registered in 1997 482 new cases of cancer patients under 18 years. And in the year 1998 399 children died from cancer including leukemia.
To fight this situation, a group of parents founded a small non-governmental organization for children with cancer and other blood diseases, which in May 1996 was legalized as the association PAVEL, meaning "Receiving Help - Life is Bright".
Its purpose is to offer moral, material and juridical help to parents of children with cancer. We often noticed that, whenever children get such a serious disease, their parents become desperate and hopeless. They find themselves in a hospital atmosphere which is often foreign to them, especially with the medical terminology. The parents' despair is increased by other factors like the lack of medicines in and their high costs. lack of adequate equipment or special laboratories, the difficulty to offer a proper diet or better food during and after the treatment of the child, lack of knowledge about the respective disease, its causes, its treatment, sometimes lack of communication between the child's doctor or nurse and the parents, lack of information about a number of things.
The association PAVEL wants to meet many of these needs and has succeeded already in several ways:
Through PAVEL several institutions (hospitals, associations, orphanages, churches) and people received help such as medication, furniture, medical equipment, food, clothes, toys.
The Parent House was opened in 1998 and it houses the parents who com to Bucharest for the treatment of their children free of costs.
The association
- is supplying parents with food (weekly for one year - or as long as the child is in treatment)
- It helps parents to contact different hospital and clinics and fights to get the medication
- It published several booklets and picture books for children
- It organizes festivities in the hospital such as Christmas or Easter celebrations
All this was realized with the kind help of other foundations, organizations or companies from Holland, France, Germany, England, Canada and Romania. But also thanks to the fight and the efforts of a small, very well intended and active group of people from PAVEL, most of them volunteers (in the majority parents or close relatives of children with cancer) who struggle in their private life like all other Romanians.
We are always trying to improve the conditions of the hospitals in order to save the lives of the young patients, who have a right to live and enjoy life like any other child. We are looking to establish connections with other groups to improve the situation in our hospitals. Through ICCCPO it will be possible. A Romanian philosopher and priest once said: "Give and you will get". Through ICCCPO we can all get a lot.