A special guest at the meeting was the mother of a child who had undergone bone marrow transplant. In her very personal speech, she thanked all the personnel of the department. She described what the hospital stay involved, and what it means to experience your own child’s serious disease. She also gifted a photo taken during her stay at the hospital with her child to Professor Iwona Malinowska, head of the transplant surgery ward at the WUM Department of Pediatric Oncology, Hematology, and Transplantology.
The conference was hosted by Professor Paweł Łaguna, Head of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, Hematology, and Transplantology. He reminded everyone that the history of the department had begun with two hospitals: “Działdowska” and “Litewska”.
“Those two pathways in history came together in 2002, which is when the Chair and Department of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology was established, led by Professor Michał Matysiak,” Łaguna recalled. “In 2015, the department was transferred from “Litewska” to the present building at the UCC Children’s Clinical Hospital. Currently, we are the only pediatric hematology department in Mazowsze. As the only facility in Poland, we have a hemorrhagic diathesis clinic for children. We have one of the two hematology clinics for children in Mazowsze, and one of the three oncology clinics for children in our voivodeship.”
Professor Łaguna expressed his thanks for the entire team of the clinic for their immense effort and putting all their energy in their work.
A special guest spoke at the conference, i.e. Professor Jacek Wachowiak from the Department of Pediatric Oncology, Hematology and Transplant Surgery at the Poznan University of Medical Sciences. He discussed the history and current state of blood-forming cell transplantation in children and youth in pediatric oncology and hematology departments in Poland.
The event also included a presentation about transplantation in adults. Professor Grzegorz Basak, Head of the Chair and Department of Hematology, Transplantation, and Internal Medicine, WUM CCH, presented his department and its work. He also described the cooperation between his department and the one run by Professor Łaguna: for example, it is at the Department of Hematology, Transplantation, and Internal Medicine, CCH, that bone marrow is collected from adult donors – relatives of the pediatric patients.
“We are friends and partners, and together we fight for the common good,” Basak summarized.
Also Professor Iwona Malinowska spoke at the conference, describing her professional experience and the circumstances around the creation of the transplantation department.
“The department opened in 2017. Since then, we have performed over 100 procedures; most of them were autologous, 35 were allogenic. Family donors have been a considerably large group,” she said. “Today I got emotional, because in the audience I can see a patient, with their parents, who was the first to undergo allotransplantation at our department in 2022.”
The event concluded with the performance by Maja and Zuzanna Jabłońskie, 6th-year students of the Faculty of Medicine. They were accompanied by Jakub Rochoń, also a 6th-year student, on the guitar.
