By Monica Cuni | Project Assistant
A liver transplant is a major surgery that can give a sick person a second chance at life. Although transplant activity has decreased during the covid19 pandemic, urgent liver transplants have continued during these difficult times we are living. Family support has been shown to be necessary for the complete recovery of these patients, and providing a safe place for family members is a major problem for AETHA (Aragon Liver Transplant Patients Association).
The Transitional Accommodation Project – Shelter homes of AETHA, is born from the need to offer a resource to those families who have to travel to Zaragoza, capital of Aragon, due to their medical situation from their habitual residence, generally municipalities and rural areas throughout Aragon. Therefore, AETHA offers these shelters to meet and respond to these demands, always free for families. Donations to projects like these have a huge impact on society and specifically for patients who need a liver transplant. Now more than ever it becomes more important given the pandemic situation we are living in.
Zaragoza is one of the regions of Spain with the most cases of Covid-19, and the decrease of hospitalization is going slowly. In this first quarter of 2021 the occupancy of AETHA's reception flats has been constant.
At one of the shelter home's 6 families have stayed since the begging of 2021. And on the other, one of which continues living there since February 10. We have to have in mind that currently, due to the health crisis caused by Covid-19, only one family can be housed per shelter home, which is limiting a lot because there are families who would have used the resources of AEATHA and cannot access it.
There is currently a family with three young children at one of the shelter home, who have stayed there for two months. They are from Portugal and were transferred to a hospital in Aragón because of a traffic accident. The father of the family is in the ICU. On the other flat there is now a lonely old lady.
AETHA volunteers monitor users by phone and, if necessary, accompaniment of people staying in the flats. Because of the pandemic, there is little or no face-to-face monitoring of the situation. AETHA volunteers are people with liver transplants and, as the floors are full of people who come and go from hospitals, the less they approach the shelter homes, the better.
The shelter homes are a continuous project in which we try to keep the flats maintained and we are always thinking about how to improve them so that the stay of the people is as comfortable as possible.
This year AETHA has set a goal: to buy household items for the shelter homes (bed linen, towels, blankets, new duvets) and kitchen equipment/utensils that have suffered some kind of wear. In addition, one entire flat will be painted.
All these improvements will help to improve the quality of families' stay. Thanks to the support of donations received through GlobalGiving, it will be possible to continue supporting these projects that help so many families in need.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
