Eat, hope, live!

Polina is in the first grade and she is 7 years old. Curly hair, cute pigtails. She is smart. She all the time wants to do something. The movement plays a huge role in the girls' life. But, ironically, the girl hardly seats. Disease ties her to the wheelchair and cruelly every day takes strength away.

Spinal muscular atrophy is a hereditary recessive disease and a lot of parents can carry it without knowing. Polina's parents couldn't imagine such possibility, because the eldest daughter is healthy. However, the statistics indicate that every 80th couple can have a child with spinal muscular atrophy. Polina suffers from lack of muscles nutrition, the loss of weight is progressing and, as a result, muscles lose strength. A girl doesn't walk, doesn't stand, sits only with the support, all the day she is in a tight corset, without which her spine just folds. In simple words, the child is gradually becoming paralyzed.

Since the discovering of the first medication for this disease, the number of patients, who are getting better is increasing day by day. Polina's mother has hope and faith, that her daughter once will make her first step. Today it is important not to miss the time and to stop the progression of the disease, and one day the medication will be available in Ukraine. Polina needs constant medical support therapy, physical rehabilitation and taking of special energy protein mixtures to strength the muscles. Polina needs them all the time, like milk and bread, but cost much more. This nutrition has everything for a girl to grow and develop, learn, play and live. Every two months she needs 60 bottles of PediaSure Maloezhka and 4 cans of Resource junior.

Support the little girl!

Name: Kozenkova Polina, 23.03.2011

City: Pisochyn town, Kharkiv region

Diagnosis: spinal muscular atrophy, hyperhomocysteinemia, mitochondrial dysfunction