Cancer Hospital in Moldova receives a large donation of vital tubes for its leukemia ward.

A Moldovan state health insurance will guarantee you with a bed in a hospital. Anything on top of this costs extras, even bed sheets. The Cancer Hospital, Chisinau struggles to get by to provide adequate equipment and medicines to its patients. This often leads to great difficulties especially amongst those whose income can only cover the bare minimum. The problem does not stop there. Due to recent informal Russian sanctions, Moldova is unable to obtain access to some of the most essential medicines and medical equipment. If families are able to scrape the money together for treatment, they are often disappointed or left stranded by the hospital, as there are no means of obtaining vital drugs and necessities.  Dr. Irina Plaschevici, the head of the children’s leukemia ward, tells us of having to send parents to places such as Italy, Ukraine, Turkey and Romania to find supplies and medicines. One of the most recent shortages on her ward was simple but vital tubing; all medicines, fluids and bloods are administered using these tubes.  “Essentially, the tubes are equipped with the mechanism that provides necessary dosage of medicine and corresponds to the time-frame and wellbeing of a patient. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the treatment without tubes is useless!” 
She tells us of the informal sanctions being made on Moldova and how the situation worsened in 2014 when a local company, who used to import the tubes from Germany, ceased to provide the people of Chisinau with these specific tubes any longer.
Luckily, through a cooperation of the St. Anna Hospital in Vienna, the Austrian charity Concordia, Krebsallianz and Coram Deo, we were able to deliver the donated tubes to the children’s leukaemia ward in Chisinau. 
 The tubes were donated in time so that nobody had to miss out on receiving crucial medication. Dr. Irina Plaschevici has repeatedly requested the Ministry of Health to approve the expenditure and to sign a direct contract with the Supplier/Producer Company (B Braun) but her appeals are constantly denied due to the lack of funding. “The lack of funding has fiercely attacked the health sector and particularly the supply of medical instruments, medicines and consumables” Dr Irina explains.
The leukaemia ward continues to ask for help to find the tubing. Obtaining such a basic necessity for a hospital is an on-going up-hill struggle and an unnecessary task for doctors and parents who should be caring for the children. This large donation will help the Leukemia ward out for about a year. Once this runs out, the search continues again. Parents will have to start travelling to neighbouring countries to find their next source and the doctors will continuously ask charities, like ours, for support.