Nagymáté Hanna Alapítványa

 

Nagymáté Hanna Alapítvány – Hungary, Makó

We used to have a daughter – Hanna -. She was our first child. We lost her in 2004. She shouldn’t have died, she had never been ill before. She lost her life due to medical negligence.

Short story about her loss:

She began to vomit at night on he last day of August, 2004. It happened 3 times in a row. We didn’t have enough experience and loved her very much, so we decided to take her to the local hospital. We considered doctors smart, dedicated, professional people who do their work well. If children vomit in Hungary, doctors give infusion to them immediately. Doctors tried to give it to Hanna, but they failed to do it. So they carried out a vein preparation. This intervention took long hours and it was very painful. We had to wait in the coridor listening to her cry. On he following day  doctors neglected to check the branul. They didn’t treat her in an appropriate way. Her general status declined rapidly but they didn’t care to do anything. On he last day of her life, doctors thought that Hanna had needed more serious treatment, so she had sent to a better equipped hospital. She caught of an infection caused by germs that are autochthonous in hospital enviroment and died of untreated sepsis.

 

Medical negligence has a tendency to grow in Hungary. We set up a foundation that we offered to our daughter’s memory. With our foundation we want to draw attention to medical negligence and want to change doctors’ attitude towards patients. We find prevention important, but we have to accept that insensible death will always happen. Our main proposal is to prevent medical negligence and decline its occurance. If a tragedy of this kind happens, we want to support families who lost their child. With our charity we want to save children from unnecessary death, and provide support to parents during difficult times having lost their child due to medical negligence. One of our aims is to make life easier and to help in case of problems by existing means.

 

Our goals in brief:

1.- To support local pediatricians by donating medical equipment

2.- To organise trainings for medical staff

3.- To create new, child friendly enviroment at hospital wards

 

For children at hospital:

1.- To take care of children with visiting and entertaining them

2.- To support those parents whose child has been at hospital by letting them relax and providing them mental support

 

Family Center

One activity of our foundation has been operating a family center. We set it up in 2007, 3 years after Hanna’s death. It has been running some very well-organised programmes for the youngest children to the older generation. We provide daycare service for children helping parents to return to work. Other services/classes at our Center include yoga, pilates, gymnastics for children and adults, child-mother gymnastics, prenatal yoga, massage for babies, developing gymnastics for children. One of our aims is to strenghten local community life. In order to to do that we organise some occupations for wide range of community on a regular basis where they can meet and maintain contact. We provide activities for children with special need. Since poverty is high in Hungary we try to help those families who are socially and financially disandvantaged. We raise money, collect clothes and toys for them. We organise summer camps for children around various themes that they enjoy very much.

 

Prevention of medical negligence

Social, political and moral status show a declining tendency in Hungary. Under these circumstances we have difficulty reaching our goal to prevent medical negligence. Prevention should be based on changing the attitude of doctors and medical staff towards patients and treatment. I find it important that medical negligence as a subject be part of curriculum at Medical Universities. We want to support relatives who lost their family members, as they are left in their pain alone without any compassion for their loss. We find it utterly important to give them legal advice, and mental support.

Our foundation has two proposals in progress. One is to hire a photographer take pictures in the topic of child and maternity. These photos will be donated to hospitals to make them more child friendly.

The other one is which is the very important to us is to create a memorial statue for the children who have been lost. There would be a memorial place with this statue, where parents, relatives could remember their lost child.