The Foundation for Premature Children and Their Families

The Foundation and It’s Objectives

The Foundation for Premature Children and Their Families was established in December 2013 by Hana Píšová and Markéta Stránská. The Foundation was created on the basis of our own experience with giving birth to premature twins. The Foundation aims to help families which, following the birth of premature children, find themselves in difficult financial and psychological situations. The Foundation helps specific families with their particular needs associated with a premature baby.

The Foundation’s administrative board decides on the specific form and amount of assistance. Doc. MD. Zbynek Straňák, PhD., MBA, the head of the Neonatal Department at the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague, is the chairman of the Foundation’s administrative board.

Hana Píšová – founder of the Foundation

‘Personal experience motivated me to establish the Foundation. Our twin babies were born prematurely at 24 weeks. Their birth weights were 680 g and 700 g, and they spent their first four months in an incubator. Today they are almost four years old and are healthy and beautiful children. The first years involved medical treatment, daily reflexlocomotion exercises and constant uncertainty regarding their development and future quality of life. I know all too well what people in this situation go through - it’s a heavy psychological, financial and time burden for the entire family. At the beginning we struggled to figure out who to turn to for help. It seems that we have won our battle , and now I would like to help people in similar situations’.

Markéta Stránská – founder of the Foundation

‘Hana was a business acquaintance of mine. I shared her joy from her long-awaited pregnancy, her sorrow from her premature delivery and all that followed. I have five children, including a set of twins. When I saw what you Hana and her family went through, I realized that success and money are nothing without good health. It had a great impact on me, and I decided to join forces with her. By establishing the Foundation I would like to help those less fortunate than I’.

Doc. Zbyněk Straňák – chairman of the Foundation’s administrative board

‘As the head of the Neonatalogy Department at the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague-Podolí, Hana’s twins were under my care during their entire hospitalisation. When Hana approached me at the end of 2012 with the idea of providing financial assistance to families with premature babies, she had my full support. This issue is not addressed by any other foundation. Although other foundations provide aid to purchase equipment for neonatal centres, no organisations offer direct financial help to families with preterm infants. Each and every day I witness the extremely complicated financial and psychological situations these families often face. A year later, Hana and Markéta established their foundation, and I accepted their offer to become the chairman of the administrative board and to help them correctly identify and support specific families with their needs connected to a premature child. As I said before, even if we manage to help only a few families, our efforts have been worthwhile’.

Doc. MUDr. Zbyněk Straňák, CSc., MBA

* 1964 in Prague
Graduated from the Faculty of Paediatrics at Charles University in Prague in 1989. He began his career in the Children’s Department at the hospital in Most; in 1990-1993 he worked in the Intensive Care Unit for Newborns at the General University Hospital in Prague, and he has been on the staff of the Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague since 1993. Dr. Straňák has been the head of the Neonatal Department since 1996. After earning his certification in paediatrics (1992) and neonatalogy (1995), he defended his Ph.D. (1999) and associate professor (2004) dissertations at the 3rd Medical Faculty at Charles University. Dr. Straňák earned his MBA from the Prague International Business School in 2008.

He is a member of many national and international professional associations and sits on the committee of the Czech Neonatology Society. He also served as the Society’s research secretary in 2001-2008. Dr. Straňák is the author of many lectures at national and international conferences; he has published several dozen scientific papers (in the Czech Republic and abroad) and regularly teaches in undergraduate, graduate and lifelong education (Charles University, the University of J. E. Purkyně, the Czech Medical Chamber). Dr. Straňák is the principle investigator and co-investigator of numerous grant projects and international multicentric studies in neonatal intensive care; he is also the author and co-author of projects to build fetal centres and those for deaf mothers.