Bucharest (AFP)
The emblematic American heavy metal band Metallica has donated 250,000 euros to an association that is building in Bucharest the first children's oncology hospital in Romania, the organization said Thursday.
"It's a gesture we did not even dare to dream about," Carmen Uscatu, one of two founders of the Romanian association Daruieste Viata (Donne vie), told AFP.
"Our goal is to bring a little joy to sick children, just as Metallica is making its fans happy around the world," she added after the group's concert in Bucharest.
"The last leg of our European tour begins with a very special donation," said Metallica in a statement from the charity All Within My Hands, founded by the group.
Moved by the plight of sick children, in a country where the cancer survival rate is among the lowest in Europe and where infant mortality is twice the European average, Carmen Uscatu and Oana Gheorghiu, the other founder of the NGO, launched at the end of 2017 a call for donations to build a hospital oncology.
Less than two years later, the skeleton of the six-storey building is ready while about 10 million euros of private donations have been collected.
Romania, one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the EU, says Transparency International, is struggling to modernize its dilapidated infrastructure. In 2014, the Social Democrat government committed to build four regional hospitals, partly financed by European funds, but the work has still not started.
© 2019 AFP