Bucharest (AP) – the mere fact of Andrei still alive disconcerting to the medical, because the tiny baby’s tiny limbs you predicted just a few days of life when he was born almost without intestines, eight months ago.
Has now emerged a glimmer of hope for another miracle.
Several people in Europe and United States have begun to offer money so that Andrei has a complicated bowel transplant in us installations, announced on Thursday the pediatrician Catalin Cirstoveanu, doctor on the baby seat.
Offers arrived after the Associated Press information spread last week the way in which Cirstoveanu, director of the neonatal ward of children hospital Marie Curie in Bucharest, moved to babies abroad receive vital surgeries as a way to avoid a culture of corruption in which many doctors operate solely with bribes. The photographs, distributed by the AP, by Andrei in an incubator generated a feeling of solidarity in the world.
“Have come offers of aid, especially from abroad, of a non-governmental organization,” said Cirstoveanu.
The cost of the operation amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars, a far cry from the scope of the Roma parents of Andrei, who live in a poor in the eastern part of Romania region. The average salary in Romania is of 350 euros (460 dollars).
The culture of bribery in the hospitals of Romania is so entrenched that nurses expect money only to change the sheets. Surgeons may receive at least hundreds of euros (dollars) for an operation, while the Anesthetists earn one-third of that amount.
Cirstoveanu directs the cardiac unit in the Marie Curie. But its ultramodern equipment has been dormant since banned its staff to accept bribes. Faced with this situation, sends towards Western Europe on cheap flights to sick babies to be treated by doctors who do not expect bribes.
Andrei, which weighs less than a neonate average, has only 10 centimeters (four inches) of intestines against the nearly three meters (yards) of other babies of his age. Like these, is at the beginning of the dentition.
In the middle of his ordeal, captivated their nurses, some of whom played the Lottery with the intention to get the necessary money for surgery in United States, that Cirstoveanu now expects it is received free.
The parents of Andrei, who live hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the hospital, visit rarely to his son who was born premature on July 27 in the small town of diplomat.
“There is no muscle or fat, but it bothers when nobody pays attention,” said Andrei Cirstoveanu, which weighs 2.8 pounds 6,16.
Without surgery, he warned, Andrei might have a life expectancy of “one, two, three months”.
