What are we doing?

The Association Friends of Cuba channels with the Cuban competent authorities as regards health all the collaboration and disinterested help of different organizations, entities and people, trying to get many sick children of cancer to have better conditions in the treatments that they receive in different hospital institutions in Cuba.

As a result of an incessant work and by means of fund-raising campaigns and goods the restoration has been reached (partial or total) of diverse rooms of hospital institutions, such as the remodeling of the Room of Pediatrics of the Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology (INOR), of the Service of Oncohematology of the Pediatric Hospital "Juan Manuel Márquez", the room of Oncology of the "William Soler" Hospital  and it begins to be remodeled the Service of Oncolgía of the Pediatric Hospital of Center Havana, this last one with the financial collaboration among the Embassy of Switzerland in Cuba and the government of the island. 

By the Association's president initiative, and with the support of different national and foreign institutions, they were organized collective parties to these sick children, at May 5th of 2001 in the Lenin Park, lung of air of the Cuban capital, in December 15th, in the gardens of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), to those that attended the small ones patient with their relatives and medical staff, outstanding personalities of the Cuban sport were invited, as the olympic and world multichampion of the heavy weights of amateur boxing Teófilo Stevenson, and the recordman in jump of height Javier Sotomayor. In this last activity four thousand toys were given. 
These and other recreational and cultural activities have served as stimulus and motivation for the small ones patient and their family. Of equal it forms, the donation of an estomatologic armchair was made to the Center of Discapacitied Children of Center Havana, place assisted directly by the Historian of the City, Mr. Eusebio Leal Spengler.

Novel therapies. The Cromotherapy.

The Cromotherapy constitutes a form of distraction cognitiva, influencing in the emotional state of the patients and its relatives, displacing the focus of excitement of the illness and the treatment toward other more pleasant stimuli. According to parents', family, teams medical and patient oncopediatrics valuations, starting from the application of the cromotherapy a remarkable change of the physical environment has taken place in which the boy should remain during his treatment, what is translated in that the stress effect of the hospitalization is minimized.

Havana City, December 16 1999

The Cromotherapy applied undoubtedly in the decoration of our Service of Pediatric Oncology has produced a positive impact in the psychological sphere of our sick children and its family. The beautiful and varied coloring of the environment, the figures of infantile stories, the participation of the children in paintings carried out by themselves and the creation of a Living room of Games has made them to be stimulated and accept the hospitalization and the procedures better of diagnostic and treatment when being in a cheerful, beautiful and welcoming environment. When saying of them that compare the current state with the previous of the Room, they don't feel in a hospital, they find that they are in a hotel or the paradise.

The children have written letters to Mario and the decorators so that they come to see them, because it is necessary them to share again with those that their friends consider, with those that have made happy him their stay in the Room.

The Cromotherapy has also influenced favorably on the personnel that works in the Service that feels to pleasure and better behaviour, becasue the emotional load of managing children with cancer, what drives to emotional traumas, in intense occasions (Syndrome of Burn Out). You can summarize that the Cromotherapy has improved the quality of our pediatric patients' life and it has produced a very favorable behavioral change in the family and in the medical personnel and paramedic of the Service.

Ph. C.M. Martha Longchong

Consulting Professor of Pediatric Oncology.

National Chief of the Program of Control of Infantile Cancer

Also, with the spirit of improving the spirit of the sick children, they are offered recreational activities to those that can be displaced outdoors until different places, where they also go other cuban personalities, summoned by our Association and for the high human values of this people.

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