New way of bringing some joy into the lives of hospitalised children.
Red-nosed “clown-physicians” have just launched a new project. Starting from yesterday, they are able to communicate with children in hospitals via Skype. Their programme “Laughter is a Medicine – Skype with a Clown” was presented on Thursday at the Children’s Hospital in Zagreb, and they plan to expand it to other children’s oncology departments across the country, reports Jutarnji List on April 1, 2016.
The method is very simple: once a week, in early evening hours, the clowns will connect via Skype with seriously ill children, who will gather for that occasion in rooms which can accommodate everybody and talk with the clowns. The project will include 20 clown-physicians who have been making sick children laugh for years all over the country.
“To be confined to an oncology department in a hospital represents a special challenge for children’s physical condition, but even more so for their spirit. In addition to joyful visits that our clowns regularly perform in hospitals, we wanted to bring a much-needed dose of joy in the early evening hours as well, when the hospital corridors are empty, doctors’ rounds finished and when children have to even more intensively confront their health situation. We have decided to use Skype for this project. Unlike adults, modern children are always in step with the latest technologies and it is a perfectly natural thing for them to use them”, said Mladenka Majerić, executive director of the Red Noses Association.
This project will especially delight youngsters in hospitals across the country – in addition to visits of clowns with red noses, who regularly come to ten hospitals and three homes for the elderly. In this way, they will be additionally entertained by funny clowns every Thursday at 5 pm via their computer screens.
