Voices

Carmen Uscatu: We Transform Dreams into Action. We Fight. We Rewrite the Math.

Carmen Uscatu/LinkedIn

Aug 25, 2025, 15:38

Carmen Uscatu: We Transform Dreams into Action. We Fight. We Rewrite the Math.

Carmen Uscatu, Founding Member and President of Give Life, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“The Hospital.
Where you come to be saved. Building. Equipment. People. Training. Research.
This sounds universal. Obvious. But in Romania, it’s not. We built the hospital: concrete, machines.

Now what?
I realized—before we finished—that buildings don’t heal. People do. Mindset. Yet the whispers persist: “The system’s broken. No hope. This is Romania. Accept fate.”

But systems? They’re human-made. And I tell you: they can be human RE-made.

For more than two years, I have worked 7 days per week: 5 at Dăruiește Viață, 2 at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – for my Master’s in Global Child Health, now for the project that follows my thesis.
A secret? Dreams demand obsession. Not talent. Work. Focus. Discipline.

We are lucky. We live in an era with technology. My Master’s? Online. AI? My ally. It decodes research papers. Structures chaos.
But tools mean nothing without grit.

Why have I done this?
Because I’m good at math.
What does math tell me?
Romania: 70% of children survive cancer.
Western Europe: 81% survive.
The Math of Unnecessary Death.
What does 11% mean?
Out of 430 children with cancer diagnosed annually:
In Romania, 43 die unnecessarily.
43 children who could have lived.

This gap isn’t about poverty. It’s about lack of multidisciplinary care. Lack of research. Lack of training. Lack of collaboration. A mindset that says, “This is it.”

What if it’s your child? Training. Research. Multidisciplinary care. Collaboration. These rewrite survival.

In the last years I brought expertise from abroad. We stand now with the best: Prinses Máxima Centrum voor kinderoncologie. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.