These are photos of some of the 18 children whose lives were saved during the May/June cardiac surgery mission to Kharkiv, Ukraine. The children who received surgery at the hands of the volunteer team range in age from 6 months to 13 years old.
Chernobyl Children's Project International will sponsor three more surgical trips to Ukraine through the end of 2008, investing over $300,000 of funds you have donated 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 the missions, you can donate now at http://chernobyl.typepad.com. We hope to be able to continue this important program in 2009.
Yearly in Ukraine, 6,000 chidlren 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 operation 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 7000 to 2400, through a combination of surgeries and training. We hope to repeat this same success in Ukraine.
