In 2022, the San Juan de Dios Hospital (SJD) inaugurated the Pediatric Cancer Center of Barcelona (PCCB), an international center with the capacity to treat more than 400 new cases of childhood cancer per year. That same year, a pathway was created for families from Peru, most of them highly vulnerable and desperate due to their children's dramatic situation, who came to Catalonia to receive treatment in the hospital's oncology department. Now, the Catalan Health Department intends to put an end to this: they have detected regular flows of patients to the SJD, a privately owned public center, as well as the arrival of patients of other nationalities to Vall d'Hebron and Sant Pau Hospital, and they want to regulate it. When the PCCB was launched four years ago by the Peruvian medical director, Andrés Morales, the aim was to internationalize the center and attract patients from other countries in order to fill all the beds and make it profitable. Currently, 65% of the beds are occupied. According to data from the Catalan Health Department (Salut), foreign patients represented almost half of all minors treated at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in 2025. Specifically, of the 252 children hospitalized, 123 were born outside of Spain. However, the majority of patients who have arrived since 2022 for cancer treatment are part of the public healthcare system; that is, they do not pay for treatment, as they would in a private hospital, and access services with a health card. In fact, the hospital treats almost two-thirds of all foreign pediatric patients in the Catalan healthcare system.

Misha was born on July 3, 2025. Six days later, on the 9th, his mother, Madona, received a call from Vall d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona requesting her admission. The heel prick test performed on her son at the hospital where he was born showed results that were confirmed shortly afterward: severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). This disease is caused by a disorder of several genes that prevent the development of the immune system, responsible for fighting all kinds of infections. The first response is to isolate the patient. So Madona and her son went to live in a hospital room while they waited for Misha to receive the treatment that would cure him. He had to reach three months of age or weigh five kilos. "I was with him in the hospital the whole time until they were able to perform a transplant. It was very hard, although Dr. Andrea Martín's medical team made everything very easy for us," Madona recalls. Severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is one of the many and diverse rare diseases that exist, and this Saturday, February 28th, is the day commemorated. "A disease is considered rare when it affects fewer than one in 2,000 individuals. It's a small part of the population, but precisely for that reason, extra effort must be dedicated to dissemination, so that affected families can have the option of consulting the appropriate referral centers and so that the country's healthcare centers are prepared to care for these patients, with complex conditions that affect..." says a pediatrician and member of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunodeficiencies Unit (UPIIP) at the Vall d'Hebron University Hospital.

"On February 14, 2020, I was diagnosed with leukemia and my whole life changed." Martina Claramunt was shaken a few weeks before the general lockdown was decreed due to the pandemic. The basketball player felt unwell and went to the hospital. "Different parts of my body hurt, but I didn't know what was wrong," she says. The diagnosis left her frozen.