When a child is battling pediatric cancer, access to blood can be the difference between life and death. In the west of Ukraine, the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital performs more than 2,000 blood transfusions every year. Oleg Atamaniuk runs that children’s hospital, which serves a region of more than 1.5 million people. He says living in an active war zone means treatments are often disrupted by Russian attacks. “Everyday we have a drone attacks, we have a rocket attacks,” said Atamaniuk. When the air raid sirens sound, young patients are transferred to the hospital’s bomb shelter to continue their treatment. Bruce Brown and Bob Beckett are with Vancouver Island Supports Ukraine, a humanitarian team that has made four trips to the war-torn country. In April, the team will embark on its fifth trip, with the goal of establishing a blood bank at the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital “It is important that the blood is located in the hospital,” said Atamaniuk. Beckett says his team has successfully fundraised enough money to execute several projects during the April trip, but it’s still struggling to raise funds to support the blood bank. “The goal is to raise $50,000 for that equipment and we’re short,” said Beckett, adding the blood bank will help children fighting pediatric cancer, as well as those injured by Russia’s ongoing bombardment of the region. Stew Young, the former mayor of Langford, was on the team’s first mission to Ukraine in 2022. “What I came back with, which I can’t get out of my mind, is the fact that these are kids that are dying in Ukraine,” said Young. Since that first trip Young has been raising money for the cause through events such as his charity golf tournament. “We have to do this and we have to keep doing this until this war is over,” said Young. Over the past four years the team has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars in aid to its partners in Ukraine. Before each trip, the team reaches out to the four communities and two hospitals that it has been working with to see what projects they can help with. “Their requests deal with the needs of children, and for the Ukrainian people, their future is in their children,” said Brown. This project is no different, and it could help save the lives of thousands of children in Ukraine—children who, in many cases, may be so young that they don’t know a life without war. “If there is any way at all that you can provide $5, $100, all of that money—every cent will go to the project of building that blood bank,” said Beckett. Donations can be made via Vancouver Island Supports Ukraine’s website.
