12 years of Ana Rukavina Foundation

Dear friends, just over a twelve years ago, a letter, and a simple, but a sincere and great desire – the desire for life, has generated the idea and a vision that the Foundation has been following for eleven years. On Valentine’s Day in 2007, we have officially started our work.
The desire for life, but also for the life of everyone who has been in a similar, difficult and uncertain situation, Ana sent a message that became our mission.
Until the beginning of the work of the Foundation, the Croatian Bone Marrow Donors Registry numbered modest 150 members, mostly family members of the patients.
Today, this number, with the hard work of the Foundation, but also of all of you, has risen to more than 61,000 potential donors, and what we are especially proud of since the beginning of the work of the Foundation, 98 people received a chance to live thanks to donors from the Croatian Registry.
On Ana’s birthday, March 28th, 2007, the Foundation helped set up the first public
Ana Rukavina’s umbilical cord blood bank at University hospital Zagreb and so far, more than 15,000
young mothers have done a noble act of donating stem cells of umbilical cord blood.
Guided by new goals and the wish to provide the best quality of medical care to the patients in our country, Ana Rukavina Foundation announced in July 2014 the first public tender for awarding the resources for professional training of doctors in the field of hematology and other related specializations and so far five young doctors have been given the opportunity to perfect themselves at the best world and European clinics.
Thank you for being with us all these years, thank you to all who helped the Foundation in any way, and mostly thanks to all of you for enrolling in the Croatian Registry and donating your stem cells to help the patients increase their chance of healing.