Project: Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine

Launch date: 2020

In early 2020, the whole world faced a new challenge — COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, the public health system of Ukraine had many problems to solve. There was not enough equipment to help patients with severe coronavirus. Hospitals lacked modern ventilators, sample analysers, as well as protective equipment for doctors and rapid tests.

Rinat Akhmetov was the first to come to help the country. Back in February, he allocated UAH 300 million to fight COVID-19 and combined the resources of his charitable foundation, FC Shakhtar and other SCM assets to help the country. Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine was created as part of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation's program Rinat Akhmetov-Saving Lives. This is the largest, most systematic and large-scale private initiative aimed at helping state medical institutions in the fight against coronavirus.

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation provides doctors who treat only coronavirus patients with the most necessary things within the framework of Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine. Over 200,000 units of personal protective equipment and supplies, as well as 320,000 rapid tests, were transferred to state hospitals.

The purchase of over 200 high-end ventilators for public hospitals was very crucial. The Foundation managed to purchase and bring them to Ukraine despite the shortage of high-tech medical equipment in the world. Ventilators help save the lives of patients with severe  coronavirus. Ukrainian hospitals required this equipment most of all.

High-end ventilators from the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation were delivered to both large clinics in regional centers and small hospitals in 12 regions of the country. The first of them were transferred in March 2020.

The ventilators delivered by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation correspond to the world standards completely. Furthermore, they are ultimately easy to use, and they rule out the human error significantly. This ensures that the purchased ventilators can be used immediately after installation, and that is very important at the time of the epidemic, when saving a life is a matter of right here, right now.

Using the smart mode, a device itself analyses the patient's condition and selects the most optimal level of oxygen supply. This is the first time that ventilators of this class have been delivered to many hospitals throughout Ukraine. It is important to understand that the devices will be relevant even when the coronavirus pandemic ends.

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has been helping doctors not only by delivering equipment but also by sending necessary expendable materials. The Foundation delivered customised sets of medical clothing to medics working with COVID in the intensive care units.

In addition, the Foundation has implemented a number of educational projects. Thus, jointly with the Ministry of Health and the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine, two online conferences for doctors who work with ventilators were held. Those were three-hour webinars where the leading experts of the Ministry of Health told the doctors of public hospitals the world's best practices in the treatment of COVID-19 and some details when operating the latest models of ventilators. Almost 2000 Ukrainian doctors took part in online training from the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.

Furthermore, jointly with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Ministry of Health and the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine, the Foundation presented a new video project COVID-19: Everything You Need to Know about the Ventilators. It is intended to help specialists who will or are now using intensive care equipment save patients who have complications caused by the coronavirus infection and quickly find common ground with modern digital medical equipment.

As part of Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine, state hospitals in 17 regions of the country received assistance from the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The Foundation continues to contribute to the modernization of the Ukrainian healthcare system.