«Healthy Heart» for Donbas children. How to get this help?

Six children with congenital heart defects returned to full life thanks to the project of Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center called "Healthy Heart".  The project is functioning as part of "Targeted Assistance" direction.

"The program is aimed at helping children from Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Its goal is saving life of a child diagnosed heart defect. The Center provides assistance with purchasing occluders for heart surgeries. The price of an occluder is nearly UAH 100,000. The surgery is carried out by a gentle, endovascular method and considered to be a minor trauma. After the operation, a child returns to full life", – Yuliia Gerasymenko, the Head of "Targeted assistance", shared.

As part of "Healthy Heart" project the Humanitarian Center helps children from 0 to 18 years old with open arterial duct and secondary defect of interatrial septum. 

The project started in February 2017. Over this period six children from Donetsk and Luhansk regions were provided with assistance. Among them is six-year-old Mykyta from Bilovodsk urban-type settlement in Luhansk region. Last year, after examination, the boy was diagnosed congenital heart disease. An urgent surgery was necessary. It was about the life of the child. Nikita's parents addressed the Humanitarian Center for help.  On March 15 he was operated and implanted an occluder in Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. The operation was successful, the boy has already been discharged from hospital. 

To get the Humanitarian Center's help with occluders, one has to:

• Call the Humanitarian Center's hotline 0-800-509-001 and leave an application.
• Provide documents confirming the diagnosis.
• Provide copies of passport and individual taxpayer's number of one of child's parents
• Provide child's birth certificate.
• Have an opportunity to take a trip to Kyiv for the surgery.

Over the entire period of Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center's operation 8,097 Donbas civilians were provided with targeted assistance for medical treatment and surgeries, 3,523 of them were children.