More volunteers at the Hradec Králové Teaching Hospital

• Volunteers indispensable for doctors and nurses in Hradec Králové
• Help is appreciated by children as well as elderly patients
• T-Mobile contributed CZK 85,000 to the project this year

Prague, 4 March 2008 - The group of volunteers at the Hradec Králové Teaching Hospital has recently grown by six new members, thus nearly doubling in size. The volunteers mostly take care of elderly patients and children, helping them overcome difficulties and ease their stay at the hospital as much as possible.

The volunteers' service is organized by the Civic Advisory Center (Občanské poradenské středisko, o.p.s.) in Hradec Králové. "The association's activities prove that volunteer work is very useful and badly needed in our society. That is why we are continuing to support their activities for the third year," says Martina Kemrová, Senior Manager of Corporate Communication at T-Mobile.

There are now twenty volunteers working at the Hradec Králové Teaching Hospital, namely at the Department of Children's Surgery and Traumatology, Children's Clinic, First Internal Medicine Clinic and the Gerontometabolic Clinic. They provide company to people hospitalized in in-patient wards and undergoing hemodialysis, and they also accompany patients on their way to medical check-ups in different wards around the hospital. "We try to support our volunteers by supervising and advising them and we would also like to provide them with further training. They also participate, together with their coordinator Iva Nečasová, in meetings of head nurses in the hospital throughout the year, thus almost becoming the professional staff's equals," says Renata Suchomelová, the project's coordinator.

In addition to assisting the hospital's nurses, the volunteers have, most importantly, also received positive responses to their work from the patients. The patients are regularly asked to fill out questionnaires about the volunteers' work. "Even if doctors and nurses were worried at the beginning that non-professional medical staff would rather add to their workload than help them with caring for the patients, it is quite clear today that these early expectations have not materialized. On the contrary, our volunteers are sought after, and nurses in other wards borrow them from time to time, too. Recently, for example, they helped a young patient recover after a car crash, and managed to cheer up a deeply depressed elderly lady so that she started eating again regularly and getting better," says Renata Suchomelová.

The Civic Advisory Centre was established nine years ago and has been involved in volunteer work since 2003. The project involving volunteers working at the Teaching Hospital has been underway for four years and is accredited by the Ministry of the Interior. The T-Mobile Fund contributed CZK 85,000 to the association's activities this year. "We will mainly use the grant from the T­Mobile Fund to further extend the scope of our project and provide additional training to our volunteers," says Suchomelová.

Funding set aside for the Hradec Králové region is managed by the VIA Foundation, which selected 26 projects from this region and distributed CZK 1.4 million among them.

More information is available from Mgr. Renata Suchomelová, e-mail: dikfn@ops.cz, tel.: 498 500 346, http://www.ops.cz/.

T-Mobile Czech Republic, a member of the international telecommunications group Deutsche Telekom, has almost 6.2 million customers, the number-one operator in the Czech market. T-Mobile is an integrated operator: in addition to telecommunications services, it offers comprehensive ICT solutions not only for companies, but also for other organizations and individuals. It provides outstanding services in the high-speed network, which was proved repeatedly by benchmark testing performed by umlaut (former P3) with Best-in-Test seal.

T-Mobile Czech Republic places emphasis on taking a responsible approach to the environment and society. It adheres to fair business practices, helps beneficial applications and services to see the light of day, supports non-profit organizations, small businesses and individuals, and lends a helping hand whenever crisis situations arise. The company’s employees serve as volunteers in many places across the entire Czech Republic.

More information about the company is available at www.t-mobile.cz, www.t-press.cz (the portal for journalists) and www.t-mobile.cz/pomahame (information on the company’s CSR activities).

Contact details of the press unit: press@t-press.cz.