Carmen Uscatu, Founding Member, President at Give Life NGO, shared a post on LinkedIn:
‘Please make an exception for the rapid development of the Pediatric Oncology Department at Marie Curie Children’s Hospital. That is what you can do. The professionals at Marie Curie, with our help, will do the rest.’
This is prof. dr. Rob Pieters. Chief Máxima International, founder of Prinses Máxima Centrum voor kinderoncologie, the largest pediatric oncology center in Europe, President of International Society of Paediatric Oncology – SIOP, speaking to Romania’s future Minister of Health. On RFI Romania.
He didn’t say: fix the system. He didn’t say: reform the law. He said: make an exception. For one department. For the children already there.
In the Netherlands, 8 in 10 children diagnosed with cancer survive. In Romania, the rate is 10-15% lower. Marie Curie has tripled its patient numbers since 2024, when Dăruiește Viață opened the new hospital, from 40 to 120 newly diagnosed children per year, now 25% of all cases in Romania. The nursing staff: still 15. Because positions in the public system are blocked. It doesn’t matter if you treat three times more children. It doesn’t matter if you treat less. The number stays the same. Is this a measure of anything at all?
‘For every euro invested in treating a child with cancer, society gets back six euros over that child’s lifetime. It is not a cost. It is an investment.’
This is the answer to the question a minister should ask before signing anything: why should I do this? Not because it is the right thing to do. Though it is. Because it is the efficient thing to do. The math is not complicated. Saving a child with cancer is one of the best returns a health system can generate.
We have been discussing the hiring of 5 to 10 nurses for two years. Two years. While simultaneously discussing research and survival rates with the best in the world. It is, as I said in the same interview, embarrassing.
One more thing. Thank you, mirela dadacus and Radio France Internationale Romania, for this thought-provoking interview. And for what was, I believe, a premiere on Romanian radio: simultaneous translation, English to Romanian and Romanian to English. Four of us in the studio – Mirela, Rob, me, and the interpreter: Laura C. Consecutive translation, live, on air.
For me, it was extraordinary to hear English and Romanian layered in the same conversation, in real time. Incredible work. An incredible challenge. How many radio shows do you know that do this?”
Other articles about SIOP on OncoDaily.
