With the participation of 150 transplant athletes of all ages, the Garrahan Cup will be held between Saturday and Sunday, a competition that aims to promote physical activity as part of the comprehensive treatment of children and adolescents and people with health problems. health at any stage of life.
The Hospital’s auditorium was the venue for the inauguration of the Garrahan Cup, a tournament in which around 150 transplanted athletes and athletes undergoing dialysis treatment will participate, including children and adolescents who are treated at the national reference pediatric center.
The competition, which will take place tomorrow and Sunday at the National Center for High Performance Sports (Cenard) at the initiative of the National Sports Secretariat and the Argentine Pediatric Foundation (Fupea), seeks to promote physical activity as an integral part of the process recovery of the health of people who have undergone a transplant or receive dialysis treatment.
“Sport opened the doors to a new life for me,” said Leo Basualdo, 35, who has twice had a kidney transplant, in front of a packed auditorium, after recalling his long stay in the hospital, the complications of his pathology, the rejection of the first transplant and the anguish at what he felt was his own failure.
“I had to be retransplanted and I felt that I failed the Hospital because my body rejected the transplant they did here,” he said excitedly. In 2015, after seven years of dialysis, he underwent a retransplantation and a change of life in which he discovered badminton, a sport that opened the doors to a new way of life.
Badminton allowed him “to share with others who practice the same sport and want to win, since he was only used to wanting to beat life,” said Leo, now married and Joaquin’s father.
“That boy who stepped foot in this Hospital at the age of 3 would have liked to be like this 35-year-old boy who kept going despite the adversities and the negative prognosis,” he said excitedly to the applause of the public.
For her part, Patricia Elmeaudy, a member of the Hospital’s Board of Directors, welcomed the competitors to the games and said that “they are a sample of what it means to go through life looking forward.” She wished them “successful days, but also that they be of great enjoyment and appreciation of self-improvement.”
The professor of Physical Education and cardiac transplant patient, Carlos Lirio, stressed that “beginning to prescribe physical activity as part of the treatment that a transplanted child or child on dialysis must carry out” was very important for the team of the Physical Activity Program for Children and Adolescents with Garra (Pafinaga), which has been operating in Garrahan since 2014, and highlighted the support of the Sports Secretariat in a pioneering initiative in the articulation of health and sports for transplanted boys and girls.
The event was also attended by Alejandro Pérez, director of Adapted Sports and Sports Promotion of the National Sports Secretariat, Carlos Devani, national director of Assistance Services Management of the National Ministry of Health; Gabriela Tozoroni and Aldo Haimovich, members of the Garrahan Board of Directors; Daniel Scheifer, referent of Fupea, and Andrés Rodríguez, national secretary general of the Union of Civilian Personnel of the Nation (UPCN).
Also present were Ezequiel Correas Espeche, Physical Education teacher and member of Pafinga, directors, heads of service and Hospital workers.
