Tallinn Children's Hospital ready to receive patients from Kyiv

After Kyiv's Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital was hit by a Russian missile attack last Monday, many of the seriously ill children, who were receiving treatment there were left unable to receive the medical care they require elsewhere in Ukraine. Tallinn Children's Hospital is ready to take on some of those patients and is also collecting donations to send the required medical equipment to Kyiv.
Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv is the largest of its kind in Ukraine, treating around 18,000 children a year. Last week it was hit by a Russian missile attack.
The Ukrainian Ambassador to Estonia Maksym Kononenko, said that although 33 people have already died as a result of the attack, the death toll could rise due to the number of children in need of urgent medical treatment. Much of the medical equipment at Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital is not available elsewhere in Ukraine.
"There is no other specialist place like this anywhere else in Ukraine. The hospital treats children with cancer and other serious illnesses. If we do nothing to restore the hospital now, then the death toll will rise even more as a result," he said.
As a temporary solution, some of Ukraine's partner countries will take in some of the children, who had been receiving care at the hospital prior to the attack. While Estonia's capacity is limited, there is space to accommodate a few dozen patients from Ukraine.
"Some specialties are certainly ready to take them, for example children who are oncology patients, perhaps those suffering from trauma or after orthopedic operations, as well as patients with chronic conditions. In terms of the numbers, we can't predict right now how many there will be," said Konstantin Rebrov, head of Tallinn Children's Hospital.
"We can give them the money and trust them to buy the right things with it. It is much harder to get these funds and everything from Kyiv than it is to get them from Estonia. That's why last time most of it actually went on medicines, equipment, and all the other things that they can actually use," explained Janek Mäggi, head of the Tallinn Children's Hospital Support Fund Council.
So far, €60,000 has been raised for Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital, with both individuals and companies still able to send donations.
"I have never seen any decrease in people's interest in donating. In fact, of course, the point of donating is that people want the person they are donating to at the end to be trustworthy. In any case, the Tallinn Children's Hospital Support Fund is trustworthy, and our 30-year history proves that. All the donations that reach us will reach the Kyiv Children's Hospital," Mäggi said.
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Editor: Merili Nael, Michael Cole
Source: "Aktuaalne kamera"