first ukrainian "chernobyl heart" kids surgery trip completed . . . 17 lives saved

I'm glad to announce that, through your financial support, a volunteer surgical team led by William Novick MD has completed our first successful children's cardiac surgery mission in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Seventeen children's lives have been saved.

 I just got off the phone with CCPI founder Adi Roche, who attended surgery on a young girl.  "It was such a privilege to witness ... a miracle ... we simply must recommit ourselves to continuing the program." I could hear in her voice how shaken she was by the experience. 

As I have previously posted, Chernobyl Children's Project International will sponsor three more surgical trips to Ukraine this year, investing over $300,000 for surgeries and training of local physicians. The next teams will travel to Odessa, Donetsk, and Kyiv. Your support is very much needed to complete these missions -- you can Donate Now by clicking on the button to your right, or follow this link for our postal address.  Click here to read the stories of other donors to our children's cardiac surgery program.

Yearly in Ukraine, 6,000 children are born with heart defects that will kill them in 3 to 5 years if they do not receive surgery. Few cardiac surgery programs in Ukraine perform surgery on children, and none routinely operate on the smallest or those with the most  complicated defects. Cardiac defects have dramatically increased in Ukraine and Belarus since the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

 CCPI's successful children's surgery program in Belarus has reduced the waiting list for children needing life saving surgery from over 7000 to 2400, through a combination of surgeries and training.  We hope to see this same success repeated in Ukraine.

Tomorrow, Adi -- along with my colleagues Sherrie and Jim Douglas from the CCPI board of directors -- will visit with the first lady of Ukraine Katerina Yushchenko to underscore our commitment to the health of the children in Chernobyl affected regions of both Ukraine and Belarus. Photos in this post (aside from the one of Sherrie and Adi in scrubs) are of Belarusian heart patients, you can see more in the cardiac kids gallery, and as soon as I have fresh photos of children who received surgeries in the past week, I will post them here.