Appeal to Irish people to help save lives of children in Ukraine war zone

A senior cardiologist at the General Hospital in Kharkiv, Eastern Ukraine has made a desperate video appeal to the Irish people this Christmas for help to fund and extend life-saving heart surgeries on children in the region.

With support from Adi Roche’s Chernobyl Children International (CCI) aid agency, Dr Igor Polivenok made the appeal on behalf of the thousands of children born every year with genetic heart defects. The hospital is the only surviving hospital in Eastern Ukraine that can provide these operations in an area with a population of almost 15 million.

Dr Polivenok said, “We are struggling to provide valuable care to these children with heart defects whose families are not able to buy even basics like food, not to mention fund the heart surgery for their child. This situation is now a humanitarian disaster. It is about the right to life and accessible medical care for children.”

CCI’s voluntary CEO Adi Roche said, “6,000 children are born with genetic heart defects each year in Ukraine and all are in urgent need of lifesaving surgery. Were it not for the intervention of CCI, most of these children would die between the ages of three and five, they would not live to see their sixth birthday.

She continued, “There is hope however. CCI’s intervention and the generosity of the Irish people means that 6,500 heart operations have been performed over the past ten years and huge numbers of lives have been saved. But we need to keep going, we need €250,000 for the children – the alternative is that they will die. The money will go towards covering the cost of sending more cardiac missions to the region over the next nine to ten months.”

For more information or if you would like to make a donation, log on to www.chernobyl-international.com  or call 021-4558774.