Birthday. Svetlana Panayiotidi

My name is Svetlana Panayiotidi. I am a former Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine, mother of a son and stepmother to three daughters.

Every year I dedicate my birthday to someone.

This year, I want to return to what started my career in charity - children's hearts.

Every year in Ukraine, about 5,500 thousand children with congenital heart defects are born in need of help. Among these children, more than five hundred can be saved even without opening the chest! To do this, endovascular surgery is required to install heart implants.

The installation of an occluder (heart implant) is an innovative method that, unlike open heart surgery, does not require cutting the chest to perform surgery and then a long rehabilitation. The child's heart is not stopped, and possible hypoxia and loss of brain function are excluded. These are absolutely safe and modern surgeries that the Amosov Institute's cardiac surgeons have been performing since 2013, sometimes as many as 11 a day. The operation to install the implant lasts only a few hours, and in two days the child returns home to his or her normal life. The doctors perform it free of charge, but they are powerless without medical equipment (implants).

The purchase of heart implants, where the cost of one sometimes reaches UAH 120,000, is an unaffordable and catastrophically large sum for an ordinary Ukrainian family. That is why the dobro.ua platform, in partnership with the Hearts of the Future Charitable Foundation, has been supporting the national program, the Save the Heart project, for more than 10 years, which aims to unite around the problem and provide support to children with congenital heart disease thanks to caring people and companies.

Thanks to my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, more than 100 children with congenital heart disease have been saved. I hope that this year there will be even more happy parents and healthy children.