A benefit exhibition to support the project Marrow for Children’s Oncology took place on Saturday, June 19, in the Town Hall in Hviezdoslavova Street in Košice. The event, called On the Wings of Hope, presented the work of successful young artists – all friends and former patients of the Department of Children’s Oncology, the TASR newswire wrote.
A spokesperson for the Children’s Teaching Hospital in Košice, Viera Horniaková, explained that the aim was to attract new bone marrow donors in Slovakia as well as raise the financial resources necessary to support this effort. Bone marrow transplants are crucial in treating several blood-related illnesses in children as well as adults. It is not easy to find appropriate donors, and only a few sufferers find donors within their own families. As a result, most patients must seek a donor from national or international lists of donors, Horniaková told TASR. Currently, the Slovak list is comprised of 1,300 potential donors – many fewer than in neighbouring countries, a deficiency which not only prolongs the waiting for a marrow transplant, but also increases the cost of the pre-surgical treatment.
The project to raise money for marrow transplants was begun at the end of 2009 in Košice with an exhibition of art by young oncology patients. After having acquired official permission to collect money, from March 1 to December 31, organisers also began to receive contributions, and also raised funds through selling the work of the young patients and their friends. Outside Košice, from March to May 2010, €907 was raised. In Košice shopping centre on June 10, at a benefit poker tournament, local organisers gave €13,175 to the project. Statues, paintings, photographs and other works of art donated by artists and show-business celebrities to the Society of Children’s Oncology Košice were auctioned on the same evening.
