Photo: Facebook of the Centre for Paediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery
The largest pediatric cardiac center in Ukraine is located on the grounds of the Okhmatdyt hospital. After the attack on the hospital on July 8, the cardiac center received little attention. The media mostly covered the main hospital.
Valeriya Tatarchuk, founder of the charity foundation «Your Support,» spoke about how the cardiac center was affected and the need for help on Hromadske Radio.
“When everyone started donating to Okhmatdyt after the tragedy, I immediately had a question—what about the cardiac center? It is located just 30 meters from the building that was hit that day. But there was so much media noise that I wasn’t given an answer about whether the cardiac center had been damaged. The day after, I went to the center and saw for myself that it was indeed damaged. Four operation rooms were affected.
At the time of the attack, there were children on the operating tables, some of them very young—up to a year old. The children were saved partly because the doctors were standing with their backs to the windows, slightly shielding the children with their bodies. The children were then transferred to another building. But the capacity of the operation rooms is not unlimited. Now, doctors are operating both day and night. The entire ventilation system and gas supply are also damaged. All this is very expensive—about UAH 50 million.”
According to Valeriya Tatarchuk, restoring the cardiac center will cost hundreds of millions of hryvnias. It will take at least six months of work. This means that children with congenital heart disease will not be able to receive treatment for six months. As a result, 20,000 children have lost access to the services provided by the cardiac center. This center is the largest of its kind in Ukraine.
“We have found funds for equipment for the operating theaters, but it’s just a drop in the ocean. For example, we have a donor who has donated $1 million, but that’s not enough to fully equip even one operation room.
Our foundation is doing everything it can to help the cardiac center. We are probably the first foundation to start talking about it. Because it is located on the grounds of Okhmatdyt, everyone assumed that by donating to Okhmatdyt itself, the cardiac center would also receive help. But this is not the same hospital; it’s a completely different structure.”
On July 8, Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv, damaging, among other things, the buildings of the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital.
On July 22, the charitable foundation Okhmatdyt – Healthy Childhood announced the winner of a tender for partial repairs to the hospital. The winner was a little-known Zaporizhzhia-based company, Bud-Technology, which submitted one of the most expensive bids at UAH 307.45 million.
The Ministry of Health announced that it would not finance or carry out work under these tenders and announced a new tender on Prozorro.