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Children left without parental care
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Alone Against the Disease When ill children get to our hospital, they live here together with their mothers or other relatives. This has been the custom from the very beginning: indeed, children come from far away and have to spend months, sometimes even years, at the hospital. Away from their normal life, hundreds of kilometers from their home and friends, they fight their diseases, sometimes enduring incredible physical suffering. And how could they do without their mothers, who feel their children's pain with every cell of their bodies, who live their children's lives every moment and share their condition?! Children who live in orphanages and asylums also fall ill. And sometimes gravely. Besides, children with severe congenital pathologies of the face, extremities, intestines, or urogenital sphere are just those who are usually left by their parents. Some mothers listen to "kind" advice like "oh, don't ruin your life, you are still young, you'll yet have another, healthy kid," and some leave their children because of helplessness, because of poverty, rightly thinking that no help from the authorities can be expected and it is impossible to cope alone. When a child from an orphanage gets to the RCCH, he or she encounters many problems that are alien to his neighbors in the ward and can significantly affect the efficiency of the treatment. Such a child experiences psychological shock after finding himself or herself amidst children who are constantly accompanied by their mothers, children who always have tasty food and favorite toys. At the orphanage, this child was surrounded only by "fellow-sufferers," the same abandoned children. Together they dreamed that some time each of them would have a mother, the only and loving one. At other hospitals, where children stay without parents, the difference between patients from homes and from orphanages is not so striking. But when there is one child without parents in the entire department, this kid feels especially lonely, especially miserable. However, this is only the first of his or her problems at the hospital, and by no means the only one. Further problems are medical. Of course, bed-ridden patients and children in the postsurgical period need constant care. There are no supplementary hospital nurses at the RCCH, and so the parents have to provide this care themselves. But who will help a child from an orphanage if this child must be fed through a feeding tube according to a schedule, who will see that this child does not accidentally do any harm to himself or herself? (A pulled-out catheter is a trifle compared to other things; sometimes repeated surgeries had to be done.) Somebody must become his mother, if only for this difficult time. Maybe one woman, maybe in turns with her friends. Consumables are also in shortage: children need disposable diapers, including large-size ones, colostomy bags... Many technologies that allow the doctors to achieve the best results are not yet financed by the federal budget, and so the parents have to pay for them themselves. One of the examples is the expander used in reconstructive surgery. And who will buy it for a child who has no parents? (Note that such expanders are used, among other things, to cure the congenital pathologies that actually make the parents abandon their children!) Sometimes it happens that a child gets to hospital in summer, wearing light clothes and sandals. Then autumn and winter come, and the child has no clothing for the season (and no other clothing, too). And when it becomes warm again, the clothes brought by the child are already too small. If a child has to spend a long time at hospital, it is difficult to cope without people who could take constant care of him or her and participate in his or her education. Of course, a child needs fruit and toys. But a child also needs pens and pencils, paper and notebooks, and just good books. And the most necessary thing is our attention, our warmth and concern. We open a special page concerning the little patients of the RCCH who have been left without parental care. Here you can learn about these children and their most pressing needs. And a small but important note. If you want to help the orphan
children who receive treatment at our hospital, please don't transfer
money for any specified child to our account. We just may not buy
something for only one child using this money. If you want to give a
present to some boy or girl, you can do it by yourself! |
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