Every year, several hundred people turn to "Ziedot.lv" for money to finance medicine. Oncology is the financial leader - this year, 125 oncology patients had applied to the organization until the beginning of October. Meanwhile, the largest number of requests is for children's treatment and rehabilitation - 220 children had requested help by the end of October.
Often, the patients' situations do not meet the national criteria, so patients cannot receive state-funded medicines, diagnostics or treatment. The same happened to Egida Putniņa's husband Normunds, who was diagnosed with cancer more than a year ago. Later, Normunds was diagnosed with another extremely rare oncological disease - only about 200 people in the world have it. Unfortunately, it was already at stage four but doctors were hopeful. They recommended drugs that are paid for in Latvia in cases of ovarian, uterine, and breast tumors, but not in this case.
This also came as a shock to the family, because for a moment the glimmer of hope was gone: from the point of view of the state, he had been diagnosed with cancer in the "wrong organ".
"My husband himself was in great shock because the letter we received from the Health Inspectorate, the refusal, was, I think, two or three pages long, in a very complicated legal text. At the beginning there were references to the law, some quotes and at the very end it was just quite dryly said that, sorry, it's just that the budget is the way it is and you are not our priority. That is just shameless. For someone who has worked all their life, paid taxes and suddenly you are told - you are not valuable," says Egida Putniņa.
Countless bureaucratic procedures have wasted precious time in therapy. Normunds and his family had to turn to "Ziedot.lv" to raise funds for urgent treatment.
Although the amount needed for the treatment - €39,000 - was raised in less than a month, Normunds lost his fight for life in July this year. The prescribed drugs did not work and the treatment was delayed because there was no way to get to the necessary tests quickly to monitor the tumor's progress.
At the request of Normunds' wife, the remaining donations of more than €31,000 have been earmarked for another patient's medication.
Where does the donated money go?
"Ziedot.lv" offers donating to selected and verified charity projects, as well as the ability to track the progress of projects and be sure that your donation will reach its goal, as all information is publicly available.
In cases where the state does not pay for a patient's medication or other medical treatment, some people turn to the charity portal "Ziedot.lv" for help. The documents submitted are checked and include the diagnosis, the treatment plan and the refusal from the state. Donations are then collected.
There are several ways in which the donated money can be redistributed. For example, if the medication prescribed by the medical panel is ineffective and the person needs palliative care, the donated amount is diverted to it. Even if the person has not yet started taking their medication, or has taken medication but it has been ineffective and the person has died, there are several ways to use the donation.
"In such cases, we ask the relatives for permission to redirect the donated but unused money to other patients [..]. Mostly relatives agree to this. The other option is to return the money to the donors, and we always put a paragraph in the project where there is money left over that people can ask for a proportional return of the unused donation within a month.
"The third case is when a person collects donations for medicines, starts using them and suddenly they are included in the state-funded medicines program and donations are not needed," Rūta Dimanta, head of "Ziedot.lv" and the rehabilitation center "Poga", lists the possible options.
Dimanta emphasizes that it is up to the relatives or patients themselves, or the donors, to decide how the money is used.
This year's "High Five!" charity drive theme is to urgently help those people who need a certain and unattainable amount of money.
