Life-Saving Treatment for Kids in Ukraine

Dear friends,

thank you so much for supporting Ukrainian kids with cancer.

Today I would like to tell you a story of 9-year-old Illya who has not only two different types of cancer which happens very rarely but also whose access to treatment got complicated because of the war in the Eastern Ukraine as the boy’s family came from a small village near Stanytsia Luhanska which was practically  on the frontline and had been almost completely destroyed.

When Illya was just 4 months he was diagnosed with a tumor in the head: his eyes were affected.  Unfortunately, numerous therapies including chemotherapy and radiotherapy didn’t help to save the boy’s eyes. When he was two years old one of his eyes was removed and after two more years the second one. Since then Illya is blind. His family was learning to get used to their new life situation but then the war came to their home and their son was not feeling well again.

It was not easy for the family to get to the hospital from their village under fire and there they received bad news again. There was a new type of tumor in a different location, in the bladder, that happens very rarely. The doctors of the regional hospital help, that’s why they sent the child to Kyiv, to the National Institute of Cancer, for a diagnosis clarification and treatment. There Illya underwent a surgery and started chemotherapy.

Illya’s attending doctor informed our team that the family needed support. They suffered so much with the disease and the war and were both financially and emotionally exhausted. We purchased medical materials for surgery, painkillers, chemotherapy drugs that were not available at the hospital. Only now the news are circulating about the possible arrival of medicines from the state procurement but the hospital storehouses are still almost empty with bureaucratic procedures underway. But even when everything is completed only the most essential things will be available and all the rest children’s parents will have to buy.

Such kids as Illya also need psychological assistance very much. The boy got very scared by the unknown environment he couldn’t see and the psychologist had to find a special approach to him. She was with him together with his mother and when he got accustomed to her presence she accompanied him to medical procedures. As a result Illya opened up and was no more afraid of the hospital. Now the boy needs communication and learning and our tutoring center at the department started looking for a specially prepared volunteer who would teach him alternative orientation skills and Braille.

During the first three months of 2016 Zaporuka Foundation provided 53 children with medicines and medical materials, 81 children received psychological assistance and 16 children rehabilitation services. All kinds of leisure time activities were organized for them on a regular basis. Some of these children’s stories are similar to Illya’s, some are different but all of them have the same goal – to win over their terrible disease.

Thank you for your contributions! You make it possible!

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