Based on experiences at the Patients' Rights Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), it looks like in Hungary today it often depends on your luck in what circumstances you can give birth to your baby or whether you can stay by your sick child's hospital bed overnight. This is completely unacceptable.

HCLU's campaign "I have a child with me," launched this April, aims to ensure that all the hospitals in the country allow parents to stay by their sick child, even for several nights in a row. Through mapping out good practices, already in place at some institutions, HCLU wants to encourage other hospitals to adopt common measures and ensure the general possibility for parents to be present in any ward that treats children.

Hospital survey

In order to better understand the practices applied at hospitals, HCLU conducted a survey among Hungarian health care institutions, submitting 64 public interest data requests to hospitals with a maternity or children's ward. Based on the collected information, a public database has been developed that parents may draw on as an invaluable source of information and experts can use as the fundamentals of professional recommendations.

Based on aggregated data, two institutions have scored the maximum 10 points in the examination: the Hospital-Clinic and Casualty Center at Péterfy Sándor Street (Budapest) and the Hospital of Keszthely.

Share your story

Obviously, as a watchdog organization, HCLU's aim is always to transform the rules. To this end, in summarizing the outcome of the data collection, the organization prepared, with the contribution of doctors and parents, a body of professional recommendations to be used by public health authorities.

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union has done its best to have all healthcare institutions treating children respect the rights enshrined in the country's Health Care Act by the end of 2016.

In the meantime, HCLU would like to call the attention of all actual and potential parents to its website and publication "10 things you need to know in case your child is hospitalized," as well as invite everyone to share their stories, comments and experiences.