"My grandmother can't walk at all. When they bombed, we could not bring her down to the bomb shelters," says Stanislav, a 41-year-old Ukrainian. "We lived on the fifth floor of a high-rise building."
Stanislav and his extended family lived in Kharkiv, one of the cities hardest hit by the war in Ukraine. When the air raid sirens sounded, their neighbors escaped to the relative safety of subway tunnels or basements. But Stanislav’s family stayed with their grandmother. "We didn’t want to leave her,” he says.
As the days passed, the bombing got worse. "My relatives in a neighboring village said we had to get out."
Stanislav and his family managed to get the grandmother out of the building and made their way to a center for displaced people. There, your gifts fund their food and lodging. But the needs are great, and medicine is one of them.
"Grandmother needs to take medicine regularly,” says Stanislav. “We are trying to find and buy it.”
Responding to urgent health needs with medical shipments, cash grants
Throughout Ukraine, families are struggling to get the care they need. Elderly Ukrainians fled their homes without enough medicine for chronic illnesses like high blood pressure. With your support, our local partners have delivered equipment and medicine to save lives – like the life of Stanislav’s grandmother.
In Poland, Ukrainian refugees are trying to get health care in an unfamiliar environment. Many simply don’t have the money to pay medical costs. "I have a very sick grandson who is 10 years old. He has a very serious head condition," says 55-year-old Lyubov. "We need a lot of money for his treatment."
Alina, a mother who went to Poland with her children, first spent days with them underground as bombs fell. Her daughter had just had dermatology surgery when the family had to flee through a forest to escape the war.
Now living in Poland, both women have received an emergency cash grant that can help them pay for medical care. Alina says her daughter’s surgical wound was not healing well, so she earmarked the cash grant for health expenses. "My daughter is receiving treatment, we have already seen the doctor twice,” she says. "The situation is improving."
Your support will help desperate people get the health care they need
Back in Ukraine, a disabled grandmother named Ludmila takes care of her severely disabled granddaughter at another center for displaced people. "In terms of food, Yasya has a bad chewing reflex, so everything has to be mashed for her," says Ludmila. "And we have an issue with the diapers. They are not that cheap and the ones that she needs are simply not available here."
Your support will help families like Ludmila's as they struggle with health issues. Your gifts fund additional medicine, emergency grants, and mobile clinics for hard-to-reach areas of Ukraine.
For people who have seen their stable lives vanish with the drop of one bomb, knowing that they can meet their urgent health needs is one less worry during a time of anguish. "It is really scary when children, the elderly, and innocent people die, when cities are being destroyed," says Ludmila. “When you think to yourself, ‘Well, I've lived my life,’ but the children, that's scary.'"
The Ukraine crisis has impacted families worldwide, threatening their food supplies and ability to pay for health care. These neighbors need your help. Please give where needed most.