Dear friends, let us try summarize ordinary but fearsome things. Today, we find ourselves in a period when many wounded ATO veterans suffer from delayed consequences of their injuries. Usually, treatment of main traumas, fractures and lesions they had sustained, takes time. Fearsome, complex complications start to manifest later, over months and years.
And where there are combat traumas, there are severe infections as well. Beds of contagion, severe osteomyelitis, numerous surgeries during which the bone gets whittled like a pencil, still all this does not ensure total success and full recovery. Millions of years of evolution provide bacteria with much advantage over medics and scientists: the plainest germs can effectively resist the most powerful antibiotics defending their beds hidden deep inside the human body. The price we need to pay means prolonged complex treatment, months and years of suffering in the process, and severe injuries, but as the result a patient regains his or her wellbeing.
There’s no need to tell you how hard is to overcome purulent-septic complications. Sometimes, hidden beds of infections can got awakened even years after treatment completion which puts an end to the progress achieved. In the picture below, you can see the leg of a young ATO veteran treated within the Bioengineering Rehabilitation for Wounded project. In spite of the years of intense efforts, germs have won: we failed to save the patient from amputation.
Still, the case involves not only military. As civilians, ordinary citizens like you and me, are neither protected against this danger. Everyone may slip up, fell down, get into an accident, broke a leg or an arm, and get into the same difficult situation.
That is why we’re going to improve the current situation. Usually, at the final stage, when medics at a conditional hospital fail to treat an infection, they sent the most difficult patients to the Bone Infections Unit of The Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine. It is the place where the most skilled professionals fight for a patient’s health on the verge of their capabilities and resources. It is where we stepped in to assist them.
At the Unit, the medics practice combined methods of pharmacotherapy and surgical treatment for such septic complications. Our mission is to arm the doctors with an innovative device enabling doctors to effectively treat complications avoiding the patient’s excessive traumatization. We mean an ultrasound cavitator: this is a kind of an ultrasound knife that allows to destroy the most persistent beds of contagion right through the mass of tissue. This also means high doses of medications can be delivered there immediately as well. Moreover, this method excludes surgery that exhausts a patient per se.
Dear friends, can you say these people possess millions and can afford to get costly treatment in clinics abroad? Do you think they need our support and assistance?
Within the Last Hope Unit initiative, we have been raising funds to buy this medical device. Its price is rather high. But the Institute’s material provision on the part of the state leaves much to be desired, so buying the device at their own expense looks rather unreal. Still we remember the price of the matter is high, so we took the case on: the cavitator can help bring back to normal life dozens and even hundreds of nearly hopeless patients. As proven by experience, if everyone helps as much as he or she can, the amount can be accumulated quite easily. Take, for instance, the O.R. Upgrade project when we managed to raise half a million hryvnias in three months: on this money, we bought medical equipment for surgeons, and as of today, thanks to your efforts, they have already saved thousands of people’s lives.
That’s why, dear friends, we humbly beg you to join in. It is the kind of good deed that allows saving lives and bringing back to live military, civilians, elderly people not supported by anyone. Patients who have been fighting their diseases and lost any hope for recovery. Let us support them together. Seems we just cannot leave them to face their troubles on their own, can we?
