From the Church located in the Kyiv Children’s Regional Hospital, the most sincerest and desperate prayers are heard. These are the prayers of parents who brought their children with different illnesses. Every year about 12 000 need treatment while there are only 390 ward beds in the hospital. Some children are taken to the hospital by ambulance from distance of several hundred kilometers if there is a threat to their lives.
“Our ambulance can travel on distance more than 400 km to save a newborn baby that is not breathing. In case if there is no device for artificial ventilation, the doctors have to maintain respiration manually until we arrive. You understand what responsibility it is. But all our employees are devoted to their profession and always do their best,” says the head physician Galina Mishcherska, who has been in office for more than 10 years. Judging by the external condition of the hospital, she and all the staff are doing their job well: all the rooms of the huge hospital are clean and painted and even the smell is domestic rather than hospital. The only department of pediatric surgery in the Kyiv region operates in this hospital.
But the effort of the staff is not enough. Hospital funding is insufficient and sometimes there is not enough money even for medicines necessary for rescuing children. The amount allocated by the State for children’s treatment is only 25 UAH per day (that is just 1$). If there are more urgent needs, the hospital administration asks private individuals for medical products.
One of those who responded to the request of the hospital administration was Pantelis Boumbouras, the President of “Boumbouras Foundation” and the President of Association of Greek entrepreneurs and enterprise of Ukraine. Last week, after an appropriate request, Mr. Boumbouras ordered to provide the hospital with Greek broad spectrum antibiotics (1740 ampoules). According to the head physician Mrs. Mishcherska, these antibiotics are absolutely necessary, especially for children who are in the postoperative period. Another 1133 ampoules of the same antibiotic were delivered to the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery, where they will be used for needs of patients undergoing heart surgery.
[On the photo – Galina Mishcherska, the head physician of the Kyiv children’s Regional Hospital ]
