Priorities of Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center for 2017: food, medications, rehabilitation and surgeries

The priority activity areas of Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center for 2017 in Donbas will be the following: delivery of food packages to civilians on both sides of the contact line, rehabilitation of children injured due to hostilities, "Medications for Children" program and conduct of vitally important surgeries for children from Donetsk region. According to "Donetsk news", this was reported on November 15 in Kyiv during the roundtable meeting called "Donbas: life and barriers" by Natalia Yemchenko, the member of the Board of Trustees at Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center.

The situation in Donbas is getting worse, demand for humanitarian aid never stops. "And what seemed temporary before became constant now. The conflict is lasting, that's why the humanitarian situation becomes more difficult. And if earlier it was perceived as an extreme situation, now these humanitarian problems became a sad norm. Which means that we have a stable difficult humanitarian situation", – Natalia Yemchenko said.

Reasoning from this fact, in 2017 Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center keeps running the program providing food aid on both sides of the contact line with a focus on the "grey zone" - towns and small settlements located near the contact line.

"These settlements observe continuing shelling, that is why civilian ways of food delivery are constrained here. There are settlements that we can hardly get to, which is due to special permit system. It is almost impossible to reach these places. But we do everything we can to deliver humanitarian aid to these settlements too. Especially it concerns the part of Donetsk region adjacent to the Sea of Azov", - the member of the Board of Trustees specified.

The peculiarity of the "grey zone" is a great number of small settlements and villages. "It is hard for humanitarian missions to work with villages due to difficult logistics and the process of delivery organization. There is very little information coming from them, as some of these settlements don't even have any local authorities functioning there. This complicates the work", – Yemchenko added.

She also emphasized that in 2017 the Humanitarian Center will continue helping with rehabilitation of children injured due to the armed conflict: "In 2017 children will be one of the priorities that we are really focused on. There are 163 kids in the Center's database, 57 of them are involved in our constant rehabilitation process. After the injuries these children need a long rehabilitation, and we support them here", - Natalia Yemchenko emphasized.

"Medications for Children" program will be continued as well, as part of this program insulin-dependent children from Donbas are provided with assistance for several years. "We continue delivering insulin and related products, such as test strips. Anticonvulsants and asthma medications is a very important direction too. Since there is no functioning state program, providing free medications across the contact line, children suffering epilepsy, asthma and other severe diseases don't have an uninterrupted access to essential medications", – Yemchenko shared.

The member of the Board of Trustees also announced that in 2017 the Humanitarian Center opens one more direction as part of "Targeted Assistance" program, which will cover the demands of all Donetsk region children in certain kind of surgeries". "We will start at least with Donetsk region and then will analyze our ability to expand across the regions. This applies to important surgeries, without which the lives of children are either at risk or kids remain handicapped. But we will share the details about this direction later", – Natalia Yemchenko summarized.