(Prague, 18 January 2019) After last year’s successful charity concert organised to support palliative care for children, student associations of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine have again decided to initiate a benefit event. This time, they wanted to draw attention to senior citizens, who are an often overlooked part of our society. They decided to raise funds for Život 90 (Life 90), a non-profit organisation which has been offering a wide range of services to seniors and their families with the aim of improving their quality of life for the past 28 years. Since 1995, this organisation runs a community centre for senior citizens and their families and friends in the centre of Prague, offers information and advice, manages a help line, offers emergency, nursing, and respite care, and operates a day care centre.

A check for 84,350 CZK for Život 90 was handed over at the 131^st Medical Faculty Ball. The ceremony was attended by Professor Aleksi Šedo, Dean of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine (centre), representatives of medical students, and Michal Mihalovič, President of the Association of Czech Medics (left). On behalf of Život 90, the check was received by the organisation’s founder and director MgA. Jan Lorman (right).

‘I have deep respect for all our students and employees who are willing to do something beyond the demands of our daily work or student life, to share their time, initiative, or financial means with people in difficult situations such as senior citizens oftentimes face. With their enthusiasm and empathy, students help make our faculty the right kind of “corporate citizen”. I want to thank them for it,’ says Professor Aleksi Šedo, Dean of the 1st Faculty of Medicine, about this charitable action.

The funds raised by student associations of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine will be used to run a project of emergency buttons for senior citizens who can thus continue living at home but know that at distance, someone is keeping an eye on them.

‘We very much appreciate the money which students of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine managed to raise by the sale of diaries and calendars. Proceeds from these sales will be used to run an emergency line which provides its users safety and security in their daily life, both at home and outside. It is a service meant for senior citizens and disabled persons. By pressing an emergency button, which users carry at all times, a person can contact a nonstop assistance service. Its workers then coordinate assistance using their own ambulance service, close persons, or elements of the integrated emergency services. Život 90 has been providing this service for over 25 years and it helped save thousands of lives of senior citizens. We would like to thank all of you who donated money to support it,’ said MgA. Jan Lorman, founder and director of Život 90.

Emergency services of Život 90 are available even in remote parts of the Czech Republic. At the moment, over 940 clients have the emergency button and they used it on over 6,500 occasions. The most frequent reason for using the emergency button was client’s fall in their own home.

Coloured photograph of a seed of field larkspur (Consolida regalis), magnified 50 times, from the charity calendar and diary of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine of the Charles University for 2019. Author of photographs in the calendar is Mgr. Viktor Sýkora.

The charity calendar also shows the connection between the 1^st Faculty of Medicine and photography. The author of images in the calendar is Mgr. Viktor Sýkora, head of the Centre for Experimental Biomodels of the 1^st Faculty of Medicine of the Charles University. His work focuses mostly on science photography and since 2006 on microphotography and his images have already won a number of prizes. He is the winner of a Czech photo competition Věda je krásná (Science Is Beautiful), holder of a German prize for science photography, and winner of International Photography Awards held in New York.