Alina Pătrăhău

Founder and President

“In 2010, we were told my 1-year-old son might have an incurable disease. I felt the sky crashing down on me. Fortunately for our family, by the next day that initial diagnostic was invalidated, but that sleepless night had already changed my life: I had decided to get involved with everything I could and knew in helping sick children in Romania.

It was also in 2010 that I heard about the case of a two-year-old boy with cancer: I managed to get him a second medical opinion from a reference clinic abroad and eventually we managed to save him. Ten years later, in 2020, Toni is the captain of the football team at his school. Hundreds more children followed him, but the joy of success was overshadowed by the tragedy of other children. From the parents of patients, I learned enough to last a lifetime; they always gave me the energy to fight at their side. We know it is in our power to change the fate of children who are treated in Romania.

This is how I started a first-of-its-kind project for children with cancer in Constanta, my native city on the Black Sea coast. Together with Dr. Adriana Apostol, we began to turn the pediatric onco-hematology and rheumatology ward of the county emergency hospital, into a unique outpatient center modeled after the most successful hospital units in Western Europe, specializing in the treatment of cancer and other serious medical conditions. This project led me to start a charity dedicated to continuing my mission, now shared by many others. This is how Asociația Daruieste Aripi was born, and with it, our story…”