Hello, we are Adéla and Jirka and during our summer which we will spend as volunteers at the children's hospital in Uganda, we want to support the foundation of blood bank. It will be capable of providing transfusions for all children in need.
Author: Jiri Majer
All or nothing. Project finished on Aug 31, 2017 at 13:00.
Hi everybody, let us introduce ourselves in this article, explain what Whisper NGO is, why they need their own blood bank and what we offer for your donations. :)
Jirka is 25 years old civil engineer, who during the last summer went to Uganda for three months, where he had worked as a volunteer in a children’s home and a children’s hospital under the aegis of Whisper NGO.
In addition to his work directly in Uganda, Jirka and his friends managed to collect more than 170 000 CZK for which they had funded equipment like an oxygen concentrator, an incubator or a plastic surgery for a burned baby boy.
This summer he will return to Uganda as Dr. Clown. He is currently visiting clown courses in the Czech Republic and he will spend this August as a clown at the Whisper’s Magical Children’s Hospital where he will also train other clowns to continue cheering up children after his departure.
Adela is a student in the last year of Faculty of Medicine at Charles University, who loves to work with children and her dream is to save lives where it is needed. That is why she decided to spend the holidays at the Whisper’s Magical Children’s Hospital where she will be assisting doctors and nurses at their work.
Both of us will spend about six weeks in Uganda, during which we would also like to help the hospital financially. With this fundraising campaign we would like to support the establishment and ongoing service of Whisper’s own blood bank.
Sickle-cell anaemia is widespread in Uganda. It is an inherited blood disorder which causes sickle-shaped red blood cells. Such cells easily disintegrate and do not transfer oxygen as they should. The consequences are very serious - they are caused by both oxygen deficiency in the tissues and clogging of blood vessels with broken blood cells. Symptoms of sickle-cell anaemia are fatigue and weakness and often occurs in seizures that are being accompanied with jaundice, abdominal pain and vomiting.
In such cases it is necessary to give the blood as soon as possible. There are dozens of children coming to the hospital, who are in critical need of a transfusion right after their arrival.
There is a central blood bank in Uganda that provides blood sampling, screening, processing and distribution to hospitals. Unfortunately, the system of financing of this central blood bank has recently changed and sometimes there is simply no blood available.
That’s why the founder of Whisper Veronika decided to change the situation. They are trying to build their own blood bank, which will be independent on the central bank. Currently part of the blood samples is on the way, another part is already sent for inspection and processing to the central lab and then will be stored directly in Whisper. This makes blood available to anybody who needs it. In the future, Veronika would like to provide a stable blood collection, transport and storage system, that will be safe and available not only for Whisper, but also for other hospitals.
With this fundraising campaign we would like to make stable the blood bank project, cover the part of cost which are connected with its existence. Also we would like to help with the project's growing and expanding. Just for your information we would like to write down some amounts of money which are necessary for the very existence of this blood bank.
Five blood donation sets (including a needle, gloves and desinfectant) - 10 USD
Day's fuel for the car for blood drives - 20 USD
Weekly transport of collected blood to Blood Bank for screening and back to Whisper for further distribution - 55 USD
A monthly salary for the mobiliser and driver of the blood bank - 70 USD
A monthly salary for three lab technicians, who collect, process, screen and label safe blood - 300 USD
A new blood donation couch that will be used by Whisper for its own blood donation camp - 500 USD
A 50-seat branded tent that is used for blood collection camp - 75 USD
What is Whisper?
Whisper is a non-profit organization registered in the UK. It was founded in 2010 by Veronika Cejpkova from the Czech Republic, who is still running it today.
Whisper is based in the city of Jinja, in the south of Uganda and its main goal is to protect children’s lives. Whisper is running a children’s hospital, a primary school and a children’s home. Organization is also making first aid trips to nearby villages. In addition to that, it employs nearly one hundred local people and thereby significantly improving the quality of their lives.
The hospital opened in March 2016 in Jinja is the latest and the greatest Whisper project so far. This type of charity-oriented hospital is the first of its kind in the whole Uganda. In addition to being equipped with new and modern devices, this hospital also offers children a beautiful rooms with pictures on the walls, many toys they can play with and especially nice and caring staff. The main advantage of this hospital is the fact, that the treatment fee is only 30,000 shillings (about 9 USD) while the average cost per patient is from 100,000 shillings (about 30 USD) and higher.
In our hospital we have emergency department, where the most serious cases are being headed, children's departments with malaria patients mostly and the department for malnourished children.
In the reward section you will find a lot of interesting gifts from which you can choose something that will make you happy for your contribution. However, two of them we would like to be prefered.
Over the past year we established collaboration between Whisper and Dowis.cz studio, which was founded by Alex Dowis, the finalist of the Ceskoslovensko ma talent competition. Lukas Lukero Krc, one of the artists of this studio who decided to support the regular charity concerts we organize in Prague. He is drawing a picture of one of the children living in Whisper's children every month and then auctioning these paintings at our shows. There will be twelve images and in November a beautiful A3 calendar for 2018 will be created. You can pre-order it now.
The artists from the studio Dowis.cz are mainly painting with light. Light Art is a new, unique art technology and the Dowis.cz studio belongs to the absolute top in this discipline in the world. As a part of our fundraising campaign you can purchase two tickets for the Light Art Show, which you can find at one and only permanent scene in the world at Ta Fantastica Theater in Prague.
If you are interested in our work, you can follow us on facebook. You can also contact us there. :)
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