Daniel Stanciu commutes long hours every day to save youngsters’ lives at the Calarasi County Hospital in Eastern Romania. Daniel is a pediatric health care professional. He is Roma and the first physician in his own family.
Salija Ljatif-Petrushovska heads the Skopje Gerontology and Palliative Care Medical Center. Saluja is Roma, too. She grew up in Shuto Orizari, a big Roma-led municipality in North Macedonia. In 2012, she completed her medical studies with the help of a scholarship for Roma clinical college students furnished through the Roma Education Fund.
Many reports show that Roma comes across a range of demanding situations within the scientific gadget, from the negligence of health authorities and the absence of prevention programs to language barriers and racist stigma. These demanding situations have partially contributed to poorer fitness outcomes in Roma communities, where low lifestyles expectancy, excessive prices of chronic diseases, and little one mortality are enduring troubles.
Our Roma Health Scholarships Program is trying to counter those developments via assisting Roma adolescents in growing to be clinical professionals, and thus enhance get right entry to to health take care of individuals in their communities. Since 2008, the program has funded the research of over 530 Roma from Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. We have witnessed that negative stereotypes in opposition to Roma within the fitness care system are much more likely to decrease when public hospitals have more Roma medical experts.
The software additionally connects students with mentors, mostly professors at scientific universities, trains their advocacy capabilities on public health issues, and encourages them to broaden tasks in nearby Roma communities, like facts sessions on preventive health care and workshops on dental hygiene and breast cancer with youngsters and women. In Serbia, a collection of students even created a vaccination schedule calendar in Romanes—the language shared by Roma communities throughout Europe.
Today, we’ve over 250 software alumni, all Roma health specialists, who, like Daniel and Salija, contribute to enhancing get entry to fitness care and provision of medical offerings to Roma humans in Europe. National governments have stated the wonderful effect of our scholarship scheme on the general public health area and on Roma groups. It is our hope they may devote themselves to enroll in our efforts in supporting the program.
