Obituary Hinke Panjer, founder of Help OI (HOI)

Hinke Panjer, founder of the Help OI (HOI) foundation in the Netherlands passed away on October 24th, at the age of 70 years. Hinke was born 12th of May 1949.

Hinke had no easy life, but she developed a great passion to help other people living with osteogenesis imperfecta. After meeting a desperate young OI woman from Greece at the first big OIFE conference in 1996, she decided to start a small foundation with the sole purpose of supporting individuals with OI all over the world with their medical treatment, with necessary equipment, surgeries etc.

As she could perfectly understand the fear of more fractures and the pain of a person with OI, she wanted to make the lives of those easier who do not live in countries that provide good medical care and finance wheelchairs and school education for disabled children and adults.

She and her partner Harm started the foundation Help OI (HOI) in 1996, and together with several local friends and supporters in her home town they collected thousands of Euros over the years for medical equipment to Georgia, wheelchairs and small walkers to Sri Lanka, Ecuador, the Philippines, Nepal, Russia and Cuba.

In cooperation with the OIFE, the PadrinoS-OI organization in Germany and many volunteers Hinke and Harm were able to improve the lives of many children and adults over the many years.

The Netherlands do have good health care for OI people, so they even built a special wooden guesthouse in which OI-guests from other countries could stay over the months that they had to spend in the Netherlands for treatment.

Hinke was less active during the last years, but she stayed in touch with a few OI friends until this summer and she will be missed and not forgotten by many who have met her over the years.

Help OI (HOI) was officially closed in 2018, as Hinke’s partner Harm Schuling informed the OIFE in December 2019.

Ute Wallentin