Life-Saving Treatment for Kids in Ukraine

Dear friends,

thank you for supporting Ukrainian kids with cancer!

You know it’s often hard for people to ask for help, especially if we speak about men who are raised to be strong, to be able to solve all the problems and never to cry.  However, sometimes it happens that you have to do it to save something precious which is more important than pride, previous experience or anything else. That’s the story of Yaroslava and her father.

The mother abandoned Yaroslava when she was just a baby, so she is raised by a single father. Her daddy takes care of Yaroslava, he has learned to do his daughter’s hair and to choose fancy dresses. When they really need some womanly help or advice, they go to the aunt, the father’s sister. She is the only female influence that Yaroslava has in her life.

Yaroslava’s life is not easy but they say misfortunes never come singly. When Yaroslava was two years old, she had retinoblastoma, rare cancer that affected the tissue of the eye. Unfortunately, the girl’s eye had to be removed because that’s the only treatment available at that time in Ukraine. Now Yaroslava is 16 years old. And she has cancer again.

Her father Mykola is a simple worker. They live in a small town where the salaries are low, so they keep a vegetable garden to have food on their table. It’s hard for this little family to find money to pay all the medical bills. As a man Mykola didn’t get used to asking for help, he always had to work to provide for his daughter. He was a bit shy when he came to Zaporuka Foundation but he was ready to do everything to save his beloved daughter.

With your contributions, we can help children like Yaroslava: those that come from single-parent families, from families with many children and from low-income families. Thank you!

Dear friends,

thank you for supporting seriously ill children from Ukraine.

Unfortunately, the problem of the shortage of drugs and medical supplies in the Ukrainian hospitals has not been solved yet. The medical reform still has to be approved by the Parliament. There are public discussions and protests but even if the reform is approved today as many people aspire it will take time to implement it. Meanwhile, with your support, we do our best to help kids who cannot wait and need treatment NOW. We pay special attention to the most vulnerable patients. They are orphans, children abandoned by their parents, children from single parent families, children who have recurrences and others.

For example, we help kids like little Stas. His parents abandoned him. The boy has been livening with his granny since birth. When Stas fell ill and got hospitalized, at the beginning the doctors couldn’t even start treatment because his granny didn’t have custody of him and couldn’t give permission to perform necessary medical procedures. The elderly woman who didn’t get any support from Stas’s parents had to go to court in order to get custodial rights and at the same time she had to look for expensive medicines that were not available at the hospital. She asked us to help them and we purchased everything the boy needed for treatment. Now Stas feels better and his granny received full custody of him.

Without your support such families like Stas and his granny would have to deal with hardships alone.