Our Match Challenge Announcement

March 27, 2008 – 8:24 pm
As you all know, our happy and healthy 3-year old son Sebastian died last October during a routine outpatient test at Shands.  After Sebastian’s death, we heard from many concerned pediatricians and parents in the community about improvements that could be made in patient safety and pediatric care.To honor our son and to turn our tragedy into something positive, we have established the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation to serve as a catalyst for profound change in patient safety and pediatric care.Since forming our Foundation, we have received widespread support and we are encouraged by the progress we have made in a very short time.The mission of the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation is to advocate and fundraise for a state-of-the-art, full service children's hospital in Gainesville while promoting excellence in patient safety and insuring that all families are treated with compassion, courtesy and dignity. Our ultimate goal is to build a state-of-the-art, full service ...

Our Mission

January 29, 2008 – 3:53 pm
The mission of the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation is advocate and fundraise for a state-of-the-art, fully dedicated children's hospital in Gainesville, Florida while promoting medical safety programs and insuring that all families are treated with compassion, courtesy and dignity. We are proud and excited to share our mission with you. It truly expresses our deepest hopes and dreams to bring a children's hospital to Gainesville. While we are building the Foundation and the foundation to do this, we must accomplish some equally important short term goals that focus on patient safety so no other family has to endure this kind of heartache.

Pediatrics at AGH moving to Shands UF

January 21, 2008 – 2:54 pm
As the Gainesville Sun recently reported, Shands Healthcare intends to re-unify pediatric care, moving services from Shands AGH back to Shands UF.  Since 2006, the split in services has caused undue stress for patients, additional workload for pediatricians, and a disincentive in the recruitment and retention of top pediatric specialists. While the reunification announcement certainly is good news for any parent with a child, the move is just a step in the right direction.  As I am painfully aware, much more needs to be done to improve pediatric care in Gainesville.  My three-year old son, Sebastian Ferrero, died last October during a scheduled routine test at Shands, as a consequence of a series of errors.   My wife Luisa and I created the Sebastian Ferrero Foundation to honor our son and to serve as a catalyst for improvements to health care for children. Since then, we have heard from many worried parents ...

A Message From Horst & Luisa Ferrero

November 20, 2007 – 3:00 pm
On Oct. 10, we lost our beloved three year old son, Sebastian Ferrero. For the rest of our lives, we will thank God that we enjoyed Sebastian fully, while he was on loan to us and he lived an intense life filled with love and joy. It was almost as if we knew that he was going to last for such a short time on this earth. This tragedy has taught us that we need to live like him, genuinely and intensely, because we are here just in transit. Although only three years old, Sebastian spoke three languages (English, Italian and Spanish) and was attending pre-kindergarten. He was very healthy and always extremely happy. Apart from teaching us this life lesson, Sebastian also saved the lives of others that were waiting for a transplant. We are going to fight for his legacy not to stop there and to ensure that what happened ...