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.

"I would like to spend more time with you, but I need to rest." These were the last words Pau Verdaguer spoke just hours before his death on September 17, 2024, at the age of 20. The young man suffered from an autoimmune disease since birth, congenital erythroblastopenia or Blackfan-Diamond disease, which prevented him from producing red blood cells. He was diagnosed at birth, on January 5. Pau arrived like a true Three Kings' Day gift. The icing on the cake of a close-knit family made up of his parents, Cristina and Sergi, and his siblings, Adriana, Miquel, and Albert, who at the time were 10, 11, and 14 years old, respectively.

Significant advance in the understanding of human genetics. An international team of scientists, including Dr. Àlex Bayés of the Sant Pau Research Institute (IR Sant Pau) in Barcelona, ​​​​published this Thursday in the magazine Nature the most comprehensive manual to date on the functioning of the human genome. The study identified more than 68,000 functions, corresponding to 82% of all genes.

Eating disorders (ED) have doubled among Catalan teenagers since the lockdown due to the Covid pandemic. Diagnoses have increased especially among girls between 10 and 19 years old, regardless of their socioeconomic level and family situation. However, anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders are not only the domain of children and adolescents. The Catalan health survey indicates that there are currently more than 85,000 people who suffer from some type of ED. All these data were revealed last October, within the framework of a Sant Pau Talks in which, through several professionals from the hospital's ED unit and the witnesses of some of its former patients, the causes and personal and family effects of this group of mental illnesses were addressed, as well as the phases of their journey and the importance of this cure.