Press Release Monday, 15th June, 2015

BRITISH-UKRAINIAN AID RAISED FUNDS TO HELP SERGIY TOVSTYK

British-Ukrainian Aid has raised funds to help Sergiy Tovstyk, a Ukrainian soldier who lost both his arms during the armed conflict in the East of Ukraine. Sergiy received mechanical prosthetics allowing him to carry out some basic daily tasks. Before being mobilised Sergiy was an IT engineer in a small Ukrainian town in Dnipropetrovsk region, and his family’s sole breadwinner. He has two daughters.

Thanks to the generosity of donors and supporters, British-Ukrainian Aid raised £5,765 (£2,070 at a charitable concert by Mariya Burmaka in London, and £2,060 at a charitable concert by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Choir in London and the remainder thanks to generous individual donations).

Presently, Ukrainian medical clinics are not able to provide more complex electronic “bionic prosthetics”, and often rely on clinics outside Ukraine to complete treatment; the cost of a single prosthesis installed by a foreign clinic could be between £20,000-40,000. A bionic prosthetic arm can perform up to 14 complex movements and lift weights of up to 35 kg enabling a patient to perform complex tasks such as writing and using a computer. The Ukrainian Government can cover only a proportion of this cost, and the rest needs to be funded by patients themselves, who often rely on individual donations and the help of volunteers. British-Ukrainian Aid remains hopeful that bionic prosthetics will become a reality for Ukrainian patients in Ukraine and would like to direct its efforts towards accelerating this process.

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