Healthcare

The raison d’être of Instituto Bernabeu, is and has always been medical care. Aware that economic constraints should not represent a barrier to access to medical care, the Rafael Bernabeu Foundation was born to offer support and help to those suffering financial difficulties.

Since the first couple who came to us in 2000 requesting help with their hereditary illness and as society offered them no solutions, we decided to design a Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) programme. This programme is run to detect genetic alterations responsible for those hereditary illnesses.

Since then we have successfully treated families suffering from Marfan syndrome, Leucodistrophy, Retinosquisis, Huntington’s, and Duchenne paralysis, among others. This work has culminated in the birth of children free from the diseases ending all future transmissions of the illness down the generations.

The economic effort facing these couples is necessarily high taking into account the neglect of preventative measures, the complexity of the illness and the healthcare, technology and research costs involved which are required in order to offer an individualised protocol for each specific situation.

Sensitive to this, Charitable Foundation Rafael Bernabeu has decided to include in its healthcare goals economic support and specific care so that the economic factor does not represent a barrier to these couples having the possibility of having healthy descendants.

Through a concerted effort the number of patients affected is being reduced and there is a real possibility that in the future we could achieve the total eradication of the transmission of these illnesses to the generations to come. We continue our work with this goal in mind.

Apart from the financial support for reproductive treatments and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the Foundation collaborates with other initiatives related to healthcare. For example, the donation to targeted groups of the HPV vaccine against cervical cancer