Twins Illya and Ivan Lypa were born prematurely. In the first days after their birth, the boys weighed one and a half kilograms each. They could not breathe on their own and spent four months in intensive care. Now the kids are three years old. They continue undergoing treatment, and Illya was diagnosed with third-degree deafness.

‘He can produce a lot of sounds and expresses his emotions. When he has played enough, he wants to talk, to share it. He runs around, but he cannot utter anything,’ the boys’ mother Olena Lypa comments.

The boy’s parents are IDPs from Luhansk. The family’s income is not enough to afford buying quality hearing aids (earphones). That is why they turned to the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for help. And they got it.

‘The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation responds promptly to such requests. It is very important, because the earlier the intervention is made, the less damage there will be from hearing loss,’ explained audiologist and hearing care professional Viktoriya Smyrnova.

The boy’s mother is convinced that thanks to the timely hearing aid (earphone) Illya will learn to speak like his peers.

‘I am thankful to the Foundation for timely assistance, which comes at the right time. For us, this is a lucky ticket,’ says Olena Lypa.

‘For children with hearing loss, it is very important to get hearing aid before the age of seven. This enables young patients to catch up in the development on par with their peers and have a full-fledged life in the future,’ said the Foundation’s project manager Kateryna Svyrydenko.

For the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, saving the lives and health of children has been a priority for many years. In 2018, the project Rinat Akhmetov for Children. I Can Hear Now commenced its activity in order to provide systematic and large-scale assistance to children with hearing impairments. More than 200 children from all over Ukraine have received high-sensitivity hearing aids (earphones).