American heavy metal band Metallica has donated 250,000 euros ($277,000) to a Romanian association building the country's first pediatric oncology hospital.
The donation to Daruieste Viata (Bestow Life), founded in 2012, came ahead of the band's sold-out concert on August 14.
The American heavy metal band is hugely popular in Romania and this was its fourth concert in the European Union state since 1999.
The donation was made through Metallica's nonprofit foundation All Within My Hands, it said in a statement.
Construction began in mid-2018 on the hospital in Bucharest and is expected to be completed next year, with donations from 260,000 individuals and slightly fewer than 2,000 companies so far.
Romania has one of the EU's least developed medical and transport infrastructure due to weak public administration, corruption, and bureaucracy, despite billions of euros in EU funding.
The leftist government has repeatedly put off the construction of three new regional hospitals for which the EU has allocated funds.
Daruieste Viata is working to modernize Romania's medical infrastructure and increase its cancer survival rate, which the group says is way below the European Union average.
