Zaporizhia: rescuing injured children

UPD: dear donors! Thanks to this project, we started raising funds for medical equipment in the Department of Surgery of the Zaporizhia Regional Hospital, including an anesthetic station with the possibility of ventilation by reusing the gas mixture. Thanks to the popularization of this project on dobro.ua and opinion leaders, other benefactors learned about it, they purchased the anesthesia station at their own expense and directly donated it to the hospital. We are sincerely grateful to everyone who spread the word about this project and donated funds to it. But, unfortunately, the needs of patients and doctors of this hospital are growing, so we will be able to purchase 2 mobile video bronchoscopes instead of the anesthesia station with the funds raised thanks to this project and completely cover the needs of the hospital and all its departments.

Now the children's surgery department of the Zaporizhia Regional Hospital is overcrowded. Children of all ages are treated here, but almost all of them suffered from the war. Children have complex injuries to the head, chest and neck. Most of the wounded children come here from the south and east of Ukraine. It is this medical institution that today is at the forefront of helping victims in the most hot spots of the war. The hospital staff works 24/7, doctors practically live at work.

Every day, children are brought to the hospital with shrapnel and gunshot wounds, burns, and severe injuries from the Donetsk, Mykolaiiv and Zaporizhia regions. Many children are in critical condition. Some of them had to amputate limbs. Their lives depend on the speed of the surgeon's work. A doctor needs modern medical equipment to work. The "doctor's eye" in surgical operations associated with injuries is a video bronchofiberscope. Our goal is to purchase 2 of these modern devices (for newborns and adult children) that will help doctors carry out modern diagnostics and operations on children who were injured from explosions, rocket fragments, mines, were wounded by bullets and rescued from the rubble.

Mobile video bronchofiberscopes are the dream of every surgeon. This modern equipment allows for timely diagnosis of trauma to the larynx, trachea, bronchi and lungs, to provide individual stages of surgical interventions on the respiratory organs, to control the course and result of treatment in a complex group of young patients. This means that doctors will have even more opportunities to provide modern medical care to children and have a better chance of saving them.

We also plan to purchase modular patient monitors with a capnograph and a freezer for storing blood and plasma to the Zaporizhia Regional Hospital, which will help doctors save the lives of Ukrainians.

Here is one of the stories: in this hospital there is an 11-year-old girl who was evacuated with her grandmother, mother and sister by an evacuation bus column from Mariupol. At the checkpoint, Russian soldiers stopped the column and asked everyone to leave. Passing by the girl, one of the soldiers silently shot her in the face. The bullet passed through the jaw and caught the root of the tongue. The bloodied girl was allowed to be taken to the Zaporizhia hospital by the enemies. Miraculously, the girl remained alive, she will not be able to talk now, but the doctors made every effort to save the girl's life.

*Photo credit: open sources.