This is the first time in Romania that an NGO is building a hospital from scratch, only out of donations and sponsorships.

Seeing as the State hasn't built anything related to Pediatric Oncology for 50 years, the Dăruiește Viață Association has taken on the mission of building the FIRST Pediatric Oncology, Radiotherapy and Trauma hospital in Romania, meant to offer multidisciplinary care to children with serious diseases, at West-European standards.

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THE STORY OF #NoiFacemUnSpital

Our project started in 2015 with our wish to improve the treatment conditions in the Pediatric Oncology department of the "Marie Curie" Hospital in Bucharest. In here, 30 kids and 30 grown-ups have to share two toilets at the end of the hallway and only one shower. As the old infrastructure of the building wouldn't allow us to add individual bathrooms to the wards, we decided to build a new clinic from scratch, with three floors that would only host the Oncology department.

The needs of the medical team and the incredible mobilization of our donors allowed us to expand the project. This way, what was initially supposed to be only a clinic turned into a full-blown hospital - the first Pediatric Oncology and Radiotherapy Hospital in Romania. This meant a building of approximately 12.000 sqm, 9 levels and about 200 beds.

The building will host the first Pediatric Radiotherapy compartment in Romania (with two bunkers), the first Intensive Care Unit with one-bed wards and "clean hands" access, a modern Operating Theater with 7 ORs, an Oncology department, a Hemato-Oncology department (with 5 clean rooms for transplant patients), a neurosurgical department and a surgical department. As the project expanded, the investment needed changing as well, from 8 to 16 million euros for the structure of the building and approximately 10 million euros for the medical equipment.

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THE PROJECT EXPANDS EVEN MORE: we're rebuilding the entire "Marie Curie" Hospital At the "Marie Curie" Hospital, it's not only children with cancer who need XXI-century treatment conditions, but all of them, regardless of their disease. For this reason, we've decided to expand the project with another building, in which to move all the departments of the hospital. The old building will be used as accommodation space for children, cafeteria, study spaces etc.

See the evolution of the project here

WHERE WE ARE TODAY Up to now, more than 300,000 individuals and 4,000 companies have supported the #NoiFacemUnSpital initiative.

• We've finalized the structure of the first building, with 9 floors and appoximately 12 000 sqm. When finalized, the building will go into testing.
• We're working on installations, compartmentalizing and designing both the interior and the exterior.
• We're working on the master plan for the second building, together with a team of French architects and consultants.

WHAT THE NEW HOSPITAL WILL BRING

A multidisciplinary approach in treating child patients At this time, in Romania, we don't have a multidisciplinary approach in treating children with serious diseases, nor a hospital that follows West-European rules, protocols and medical procedures. This new hospital will have a multidisciplinary team, including an international scientific board and a tumor board to carefully analyze and plan approaches.

21st century medicine It will be a hospital of the future, where technology can make the procedures more effective and offer friendlier facilities, that allow children to live out their childhood while fighting the disease. We will instate protocols to reduce the risk of infections, state-of-the-art equipment, adequate spaces for the patients and families, according to European standards (where the children can be separated according to age and disease), spaces for the parents, leisure time places - a cinema, a radio studio, etc.) and continuous training for the medical staff (including training abroad for the team of the Radiotherapy Department).

Innovation and technology This new hospital will be a best practice example for the Romanian authorities, by digitizing the activity of the staff and implementing a BMS resource effectiveness system.

A friendly and safe environment The hospital will be a place that restores hope and faith for the sick children and their families. Here, the parents will find a safe, familiar environment, where they feel that everything possible is being done for their children.

The architectural concept: "Through this project, we want to change the entire concept of hospitals. When children enter the hospital, they'll actually be entering sort of a game, with themed rooms, an outdoor terrace, a library, a gym, where they can do various things and not get bored. The theme of this concept is 'The Tree of Life', where children will be able to access various worlds, for instance, the radiotherapy bunker will be an underwater universe or a hedgehog's den. We'll also launch an app, so that children can keep in touch with the outside world when they're in the hospital. What we want is for children and parents to stop fearing the hospital as they do right now.” (Raluca Șoaita, the architect of this project, Tesseract Architecture)