Carmen Uscatu: Is your goal simply to be heard?

Carmen Uscatu, the President and co-founder of Give Life, posted on LinkedIn:

“Is your goal simply to be heard?

Today, I had to defend my thesis (the first three chapters, a rehearsal) in front of my peers and the staff from St. Jude. It wasn’t easy, but it was the best moment to realize how much work I still have to do. You realize that you have to prioritize things when you look into the eyes of your peers and see that you either look very ambitious or maybe a little… crazy. It’s a nice feeling.

But looking back at what St. Jude has achieved in the last 60 years, I become more confident: being in the right place with the right people at the right time can change the world.

Take a look at that:

‘St. Jude is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall survival rate for pediatric cancer from 20% in 1962 to more than 80% today. In 1975, St. Jude became the first hospital to identify important subtypes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), including T-cell leukemia. In 1995, St. Jude showed that cancer survival rates for African American and white children were the same when treated with protocol-based therapy.

St. Jude pioneered the elimination of radiation in the treatment of ALL. St. Jude was the first to study a computer-based, 3-D radiation therapy technique for pediatric brain tumors. We were a pioneer in the field of pharmacogenomics, which predicts how patients will respond to medications. Our After Completion of Therapy program is one of the largest long-term follow-up clinics for childhood cancer patients in the U.S.

The St. Jude LIFE study offers insights into the long-term effects of childhood cancer and its treatment.
We also are home to the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, a collaboration of U.S. and Canadian institutions involving more than 20,000 survivors.’

We are the national coordinating center for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium and have one of the largest research-based childhood brain tumor programs in the country. In 2015, we opened the world’s first proton therapy center devoted solely to children. This therapy offers more precise targeting of cancer cells, while sparing healthy tissue. As survival rates increase, clinical research is improving cognitive, quality of life and psychosocial outcomes.”

Carmen Uscatu is the President and co-founder of Dăruiește Viață / Give Life, one of the most well known NGOs in Romania and the NGO that has started and has implemented the initiative #WeBuildAHospital – building a children’s Hospital for scratch, exclusively from donations and sponsorships, a Hospital dedicated to ensuring multidisciplinary care to children with severe diseases, with a focus on cancer. She started volunteering in her free time before founding Dăruiește Viață, in 2012, with the purpose of drastically changing the way medical care is provided in Romania. 

By the end of 2023, Dăruiește Viață had invested over 76M EUR in the public health system, implementing infrastructure projects, donating medical equipments, supporting patients and medical staff. The Hospital built in Bucharest is currently functional, treating children in the following specialties: oncology, neurosurgery, surgery, ICU and operating theatre with 5 operating rooms. In addition, the Hospital will include in the near future a transplant department and a radiotherapy department. Besides the Hospital, Dăruiește Viață has modernised and brought to nowadays standards oncology departments for children and adults in 8 hospitals across the country, has built 20 clean rooms thus tripling Romania’s transplant capacity, has built and equipped two laboratories for in-depth diagnosis of leukemia, has built two modular ICU hospitals during the pandemic and has donated over 17 tons of PPE. The Hospital project continues with the NGO planning to develop the project into the first pediatric medical campus in Romania.