Healthy heart: the program is expanding to Kharkiv and Zaporizhia regions

Now the new project of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center called "Healthy heart" operates in four regions of Ukraine. Donetsk and Luhansk regions are joined by Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions.

The essence of the project is to provide children, who suffer heart diseases, with endovascular prostheses (occluders) and to avoid abdominal operations on the heart. Оccluder gives a child a healthy heart for life, the procedure lasts no more than an hour and leaves no scars on a child's body.

In 2017 the Humanitarian Center is planning to help 40 children diagnosed with an open arterial duct and a secondary defect of the interatrial septum.

"One occluder for one hearts costs nearly UAH 100,000. Every year about 2,000 children in Ukraine require endovascular operations. Unfortunately, the state does not allocate enough money to purchase occluders for children, and parents often have no money to buy this device. And this is the role of the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center – to buy an occluder, pass it to doctors and give a child a chance for healthy future. Rinat Akhmetov always pays special attention to helping children. The Center's programs for children are always relevant, consistent and effective", ‒ Yuliia Herasymenko, the Head of "Targeted Assistance" program at the Rinat Akhmetov Humanitarian Center, shares.

The Center helps the following categories of children:

• families raising orphans and children under custody; family-type orphanages;
• large families with 3 and more children under 18;
• single parents or widows/widowers with children under 18;
• families in difficult life circumstances (families, who have more than one severely ill family member, for example, mother with cancer and her child with ICP, or two disabled persons of the 1st group, etc).
• families with total monthly income below UAH 10,000 (confirmed by a certificate from the tax office)

To file an application, please do the following:

• call the Humanitarian Center's hotline 0-800-509-001 and leave your request;
• provide the documents confirming the diagnoses;
• provide a copy of passport and individual taxpayer's number of one of the parents;
• provide the child's birth certificate;
• have an opportunity to take a trip to Kyiv for the operation.