The opening of the House was attended by: prof. Zbigniew Gaciong - Rector of MUW, prof. Paweł Włodarski - Vice-Rector for International Relations, Development and Promotion MUW, Marzena Kowalczyk - Deputy Director for Administration and Technology UCC MUW, Ernest Kuchar, MD, PhD - Deputy Director for Medical Affairs CCH UCC MUW, Bozena Ścieglińska - Head Nurse at CCH UCC MUW, Adam Pieńkowski – Managing Director of McDonald's Poland, Adam Jelonek - Honorary President of the Managing Board of the Ronald McDonald Foundation, Professor Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak - member of the Foundation's Council, Chairman of the Program Committee of the Ronald McDonald Foundation, Anna Sobota - Member of the Ronald McDonald Foundation Council, Katarzyna Nowakowska – Chair of the Board of the Ronald McDonald Foundation, Executive Director of the Foundation, Krzysztof Kłapa - Vice Chair of the Board of the Ronald McDonald Foundation, Marta Ewa Wojtach – PR manager at MUW, Renata Barańska - manager of the Ronald McDonald House, Anna Borys - former member of the Ronald McDonald Foundation Board, currently a donor and a friend of the House, volunteers and members of the House team.
The House will welcome the first families of hospitalized children in May. The condition of receiving hospitality and care at the Foundation House is a recommendation and referral from the Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW.
„Likewise Ronald McDonald Foundation houses around the world, families of children undergoing long-term inpatient treatment will gain a "Home away from Home." The greatest asset of our university and hospitals, which the university has as many as five, is the excellent staff - who develop the medicine, treat patients and educate the next generation of students. At the University Children's Clinical Hospital on Żwirki and Wigury Street, more than 72,500 (2020) young patients receive help annually. More than 30,000 (2020) children and adolescents are hospitalized in our departments. Many of them, especially oncology patients, neonatology patients, and children after bone marrow transplants stay in the hospital the longest. Sometimes such a stay lasts even more than a year. The presence of the family and the help of other good people is invaluable to the healing process. Wonderful students - future health care professionals - have been supporting the Foundation through volunteer work for many years. The building of the House will be also the seat of WUMIK - a nursery for children of employees and students of our University. As the Rector and a doctor, I am convinced that the second Ronald McDonald House in Poland, which has been established at the Medical University of Warsaw, will really help young patients and their families go through this difficult time, which is a child's disease.” - says Professor Zbigniew Gaciong, the Rector of the Medical University of Warsaw.
“We are delighted that the second Ronald McDonald House in Poland has been established next to the Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW. This joint initiative of the Medical University of Warsaw and the Ronald McDonald Foundation will make our hospital even more effective in helping young patients. The creation of the House means significant support in the treatment process of children who will be able to have permanent contact with their loved ones. We see how important it is for families to be together during such a difficult time, especially in long hospitalization process. For the sake of our youngest patients and their families, the hospital is also planning to open, on the initiative of Prof. Bożena Kociszewska - Najman, head of the Department of Neonatology, several rooms for mothers of newborns, which will enable them to provide constant care for their babies".- says Anna Łukasik, director of the University Clinical Center MUW.
Comfortable conditions for sick children’s families
The Ronald McDonald House next to the Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW is over 2000 m² of family-friendly usable floor space on three floors. It features 25 comfortable 2, 3 or 4-bedroom suites providing families with personal space. Each room has a spacious and comfortable bathroom. The house is surrounded by a garden, there is a terrace on the roof that allows you to relax surrounded by plants. There is a large shared kitchen and dining area available for families, as well as a laundry room, playroom and library. The construction costs, including the main part comprising 25 family rooms and an expanded common area, were funded by the Ronald McDonald Foundation through donations from businesses and individual donors. The Medical University of Warsaw lent the building plot on Księcia Trojdena Street, where the House was built, to the Foundation and also made a substantial financial contribution. The building was designed by AFP architects team under the direction of Tomasz Flejterski and Alicja Szojda.
Priority for families of children in oncology units.
Parents of patients of the Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW may use the Ronald McDonald House, however, families of children from oncology wards have the priority of accommodation. As noted by Professor Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak, longtime head of the Department of Hematology, Transplantation and Internal Medicine at the Central Clinical Hospital UCC MUW, a member of the Ronald McDonald Foundation Board, this place will also serve to help children adapt to life after they complete a cycle of chemotherapy or undergo bone marrow transplantation.
“Today's aggressive cancer therapies on the one hand offer children a cure, but on the other hand require a period of adaptation to living in the community without immediate specialized medical and nursing care. This requires creating an intermediate link between the cancer clinic stay and the normal home, preschool, and school environment. Current health care systems often do not provide such a link whereas Ronald McDonald Houses are designed to fill that gap. They are designed for patients who have already completed a course of chemotherapy or received a bone marrow transplant, but are still at risk for early complications and may require rapid specialized care not available in a timely manner, close to home. In these houses, children stay with one parent and undergo an initial period of convalescence to return to their natural environment at the end of it. If permanent impairments have developed as a result of illness and treatment, then during the stay at the Ronald McDonald House parents learn the skills to help their children get used to this situation, and how to support it technically. All these is done in order to give these most severely affected young people the possibility of a normal life and to bring them back to the society". - says Prof. Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak.
A substitute for a normal life
The Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW has been cooperating with the Ronald McDonald Foundation for years. Every day, the Foundation's team is present at the hospital wards, accompanying the hospitalized children and their loved ones in the fight against the disease.
Prof. Michał Matysiak, MD, PhD, Head of the Department of Oncology, Paediatric Haematology, Clinical Transplantation and Paediatrics at the CCH UCC MUW and a member of the Ronald McDonald Foundation Board, first encountered the Foundation over 30 years ago.
"It was in the late 1980s when, working in hospitals in Germany and Austria, I was first exposed to various foundations and saw what the Ronald McDonald Foundation does for the children being treated in the hospital, as well as for their families. It was then that I first saw the implementation of the motto that the Foundation still holds today: "For the family to be together". Some time passed, the Ronald McDonald Foundation came to our country, and suddenly we found ourselves thinking about the Ronald McDonald House in addition to the family rooms that the Foundation initially organized and funded. Today, those dreams have become a reality. One Ronald McDonald Foundation House has been operating in Krakow for years. Now a second one is opening in Warsaw at the Medical University of Warsaw. Thanks to the enormous work and commitment of many donors and volunteers of the Foundation, who have been guided by the idea of improving the quality of life of entire families of children with cancer, the Ronald McDonald House has become a place where they can find a substitute for a normal, home-like life, find psychological support and more easily endure the hardships of treatment. The stay at the House - fully financed by the Ronald McDonald Foundation - lasts until the end of the treatment, which sometimes means from a few days to over a year,"- says Professor Michał Matysiak.
New standards of pediatric care
The cooperation between the Children's Clinical Hospital UCC MUW and the Ronald McDonald Foundation serves to improve the standards of pediatric medicine and ensures that the family can always be together, even in such a difficult situation as a child's serious illness and hospitalization.
“We have built the House in the immediate vicinity of the hospital, so that the loved ones of children with oncological and hematological diseases, all those whose treatment requires the most time, could have the greatest comfort of proximity. The constant presence of family is a source of security for the child and the House is just for that. By helping the hospital, we support the medical team, by helping the parents, we minimize the barriers of distance from the hospital, length of stay, cost, and access to the treatment. The House was established and will assist free of charge thanks to the tremendous commitment of friends, donors who identify themselves with our mission and work to benefit the entire family of a child being long hospitalized. The House is an important common cause," says Katarzyna Nowakowska, Chair of the Board and Executive Director of the Ronald McDonald Foundation.
“The fact that today we cure children with cancer between 80-90% is a success of the treatment teams, of course, but also of the primary care physician, the pediatrician, the family physician - that is, the physician to whom the patient first reports. However, the great contributions of the Foundation's many volunteers who devote their time every day to caring for sick children and providing support to their families should not be overlooked. It is the volunteers of the Ronald McDonald Foundation who make sure that the therapy period brings as few problems as possible for sick children and their families. We must remember that good comes back. So it makes sense to get involved in helping others, like the Ronald McDonald Foundation does. I encourage you to support the Foundation's activities because all the steps you take to enable the Foundation to operate in all its fields will be the ones that will put more smiles on the faces of children returning to full health," adds Prof. Michał Matysiak.
The world's first House with a nursery zone
The Warsaw House also has - as the first in the world - a zone with preschool functions named WUMIK, which was created at the initiative and thanks to the commitment of the Medical University of Warsaw. With nearly 300 square meters of usable floor space, WUMIK, which serves the children of university employees and students on a daily basis, will also offer care for the healthy siblings of young patients while mom and dad care for a sister or brother in the hospital. There will be two rooms, each about 56 m² in size, with children's bathrooms, as well as its own fenced-in 158 m² playground equipped with certified equipment. Currently, the organizational and formal work related to the launch of the nursery zone is in progress.
Take a virtual tour of the Ronald McDonald House available at: www.uckwum/dla-pacjenta/dom-fundacji-ronalda-mcdonalda/spacer
Contact: Marta Wojtach, PR Manager at the Medical University of Warsaw, cell phone 605579191, rzecznik@wum.edu.pl
