This WeekThis is the first Rotary Information Meeting. Unfortunately I don't know what the subject is or who the speaker is....it may be someone from District.
Last Week
Elyjoy Ikunyua, Client Relations Manager: Business Development, Charities Aid Foundation Southern
Africa (CAF Southern Africa) was our speaker last week and it was lively and entertaining. The Charities Aid Foundation seems to provide many of the services that we need as a Club in terms of project recognition, project management etc.
President Joan Donet received a banner from our current short-term exchange student from France, Pierre. Pictured with him is our outgoing short-term exchange student, Pierre!
Paul Harris Fellowship
President Joan Donet presented a Paul Harris Fellowship to Dr Yakub Essack, the longest serving volunteer for Gift of the Givers. He has also become an honourary member of our Club.
Raffle Tickets
Mike & Linda Vink, Joan & Samantha Donet and Gregor Heidemann sold raffle tickets outside the Parkview Spar for the Charity Dinner on the 14th September.
We desperately need waitrons for this event. Please drag in all your friends and relations and let Mike Vink know as we must have 50 people available that evening!
Rotary Club of Kyiv project mends children with broken hearts
Print
E-mail page
The average age of patients who receive surgery is one year old, but sometimes doctors operate on infants in the first days of life.
The way Olena Ichnatenko tells it, her daughter has two fathers – her birth father and the doctor who gave her a second chance at life at the Ukrainian Children’s Cardiac Center.
She was 10 days old when doctors operated to correct a congenital defect. Ichnatenko remembers the early days after her daughter was born in a different hospital: “We were told there that our child was dying and that is it.” Only after she took Yaroslava to the cardiac center did she feel a bit of hope for her daughter’s life. Yaroslava, who celebrated her ninth birthday this year, is one of the facility’s many success stories.
Dr. Illya Yemets, a charter member of the Rotary Club of Kyiv, founded the center in 2003, but its beginnings trace back to the 1990s, starting with a visit from Australian Rotarians led by Past District Governor Jack Olsson. They had stopped in Kyiv on a trip to develop exchanges in non-Rotary countries and learned of the need to train surgeons specializing in pediatric heart conditions. In 1991, Olsson arranged for Yemets to train at a children’s hospital in Sydney.
When Yemets returned to Kyiv, he established the first neonatal cardiac surgery department in Ukraine. The department got off to a humble start, housed in a couple of rooms as part of the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery, with equipment donated by Rotarians in Australia, among others. “I am pleased to say that many children were saved on that secondhand equipment,” Yemets says.
In 1992, he performed Ukraine’s first successful neonatal open heart surgery, on a 21-day-old baby. The Kyiv club was chartered that same year and took on Yemets’ cause as its first service project.
Yemets pursued further training abroad between 1993 and 1998, working in Australia, Canada, and France. Back in Kyiv, he became chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at the Amosov Institute. In 2000, doctors performed 244 surgeries. By 2010, the number had increased to 1,231. “We operate on 10 to 11 patients a day,” says Vladimir Zhovnir, the center’s director. “The average age of a patient with heart disease who needs surgery is one year old.”
The Kyiv club continues its close partnership with the center, providing equipment and donations of used furniture and other necessities, including 100 sets of sheets to outfit the beds in a new building. The club also sponsors opportunities for the specialists to receive further medical training.
“I’m very emotional about this,” says Alexei Kozhenkin, a charter member and past club president. “It was the first project of the first Rotary club in Ukraine. It also turned out to be the most successful project.”
Proof of that success is on display at the annual Chestnut Run in May. Former patients, their families, medical staff, and the community participate in a race that promotes the center and helps provide funding for supplies and equipment. The children run 300 meters and the adults run a 5K through the streets of Kyiv. In 2012, more than 300 former patients took part, along with 7,000 others.
Ichnatenko runs the race with her daughter every year. “Whenever we participate, we recall our doctors, our clinic, the staff who were always attentive to us,” she says. “I have always had warm memories about this clinic. It is like a family.”
Tania Stukalyanko, whose son Sergei underwent heart surgery at six months old, also comes out for the race. “We had been told that with such a diagnosis, people do not live,” she says. “But we do live.”
Among many happy stories from the center, Yemets heard some great news last summer: “One girl, who was the third patient 20 years ago, during our period of establishing neonatal cardiac surgery, invited me to her wedding. That was exciting.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.