This project is currently closed.
Please support independent volunteers and UK charities that make a difference in Ukraine:
Medical Aid: https://www.british-ukrainianaid.org/
Children charity: https://www.ukrainecharity.org/
Urgent Medical Supplies for Ukraine
From the first days of the war in Ukraine, we, a group of London-based volunteers, in collaboration with a medical charity "Sange Pentru Romania" were working on buying medical supplies for Ukrainian hospitals in Romania relying on crowdfunding, fundraising and personal funds. This is our previous campaign: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/support-ukrainian-refugees-in-romania.
Our work at the border with Ukraine has also been covered in this BBC documentary available on the iPlayer. And its extract is also available on YouTube.
We have shared about our medicines work at our April fundraising concert in London and an exhibition-auction.
These are some of the pictures of medicines we already bought in Romania as they being delivered to the Ukrainian doctors. The total we bought so far is at £60k and we have already helped 10 hospitals and paramedical units in 6 different cities most affected by the war.
Please do support us to allow us to continue doing this work!
The requests have been coming via our network of Ukrainian volunteering organisations who are supporting Ukrainian hospitals and raise alarm when certain supplies become depleted due to a significant increase in the usage, as well as supply chains being interrupted by the war.
So far, we've delivered medical supplies to:
- Dnipro Region Mechnikov hospital
- Dnipro children's regional hospital
- Dnipro maternity hospital
- Groups of volunteers who distribute medical supplies to the hot spots
- 700 packages of Euthyrox to Dnipro Mechnikov hospital to fight the critical shortages of this hormone deficiency drug
- Medical tourniquets for Dnipro (421 medical tourniquets - 77 bought by us (£1k) the rest are donated by individuals in the UK and USA)
- Odessa Maternity hospital (number 5) -£1.8k
- Druzhkivka hospital - £1.7k
- Medicines for Kyiv Ishtar Hospital - £3k
- Medicines for Kryvyi Rih -£2k
- More medicines for Dnipro – £1.2
- Medicines for Kramatorsk hospitals -£2.5k
Since we started doing this work, we’ve been receiving 2-3 help requests per week. A lot of the requests we receive are official requests from hospitals and town administrations that still cannot find anyone else, including large international charities. Some of these are related to war injuries but many are requests for medicines unavailable due to critical shortages and broken supply chains. We do hope for your continuous support. Please ask if you have any questions!
These are just a few recent examples of the front pages of multiple pages requests we have been receiving from all across Ukraine but most importantly from the areas that are very close to the active fighting where injured people are being operated and urgently require a lot of haemostatic medicines, strong painkillers, antibiotics and other medications.
We are unique in our ability to deliver medical supplies quickly – something large NGOs cannot complete with. This is combined with our connections with Romanian pharmacists via local Romanian NGO Sange Pentru Romania that allow us to buy prescription-only medications such as strong painkillers and antibiotics that no other volunteering group was able to purchase in Europe or the UK.
The medicines in Romania are subsidised by the government making it the most cost-effective way to supply Ukrainian hospitals. Unfortunately, this war doesn't seem to be over soon and we are hoping for your continuous support to allow us to help Ukraine with medicines it so desperately needs right now. With aggressor’s forces moving away from Kyiv to the east of Ukraine and rockets hitting civilians who are trying to evacuate in Kramatorsk, and Dnipro international airport being now completely destroyed, we continue focussing our efforts on supplying hospitals in the eastern regions as much as we can. We need your continuous support.
Typical examples of medical supplies that are required urgently are antibiotics, haemostatic medications, painkillers and medical bandages. Additionally, there is an immediate need for specialized medications, to treat life-threatening conditions that have become unavailable due to broken supply chains. For instance, with the city of Kharkiv being heavily bombed, their maternity hospital had to be evacuated to the city of Dnipro. This led to a serious shortage of Oxytocin a drug that stops excessive bleeding at child birth. We have delivered several shipments already but there is still a dangerous and life-threatening shortage. Other examples of serious conditions that we have been providing medicinal aid for are epilepsy, chronic kidney disease. Thyroid hormone deficiency drug Euthyrox has become completely unavailable in Ukraine. Although we have managed to deliver several shipments of Euthyrox, due to the nationwide shortage, demand is exceeding supply, despite our best efforts.
So far, we have purchased over £60,000 worth of medicines, delivered directly to Dnipro, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Kyiv and Odessa hospitals, paramedics and volunteering organisations. Since our supply chain has been able to deliver such in demand hospital supplies, we have been approached for more urgent and specialized medical needs, which we hope to address with the help of this crowdfunding.
Why should you support us and NGO “Sange Pentru Romania”?
NGO “Sange Pentru Romania” has been helping us by sending these supplies by lorries from Suceava, Romania to the western city of Chernovtsi, Ukraine alongside humanitarian aid collected by them. We are extremely grateful for their help so far and will continue working with them on purchasing these medications as long as it is necessary. If you prefer to support them directly, you can do so via this link: https://sangepentruromania.ro/gbp
Small local charities and volunteers have been providing support from the first days of the war. We personally were on the ground on day 2. Sange Pentru Romania has collected and sent over 35 lorries of humanitarian aid just in the first 3 weeks.
We appreciate that many people support large international charities. However, with the Red Cross (we can confirm the presence of Romanian, Ukrainian, Danish and Croatian Red Cross) being a notable exception, the actual help so far has been provided by governments of the neighbouring countries, volunteers like ourselves and local NGOs like “Sange Pentru Romania”. The large international charities were not visible on the ground in Romania or Ukraine at the time of writing. This may change if the war progresses, but the people are dying now and the medical supplies to treat them are critically urgent.
NGO “Sange Pentru Romania”
“Sange Pentru Romania” is a trusted local charity in Romania that became famous in Romania for their campaigns on blood donations. They were sending humanitarian aid from the 3rd day of the war having sent over 850 tons of food and non-food products, hygiene products, medicines, warm clothes, mattresses, beds and pillows, high-capacity generators so far.
https://sangepentruromania.ro/
Us, aka London volunteers in Romania
We are Kateryna (Katya) and Petru - Ukrainian and Romanian normally based in London, UK who relocated to Romania, Suceava for the first weeks of the war to work on purchasing medical supplies for Ukraine. In our normal London life we are a Finance professional and a Music Teacher. We have embarked on the medical supply work in our efforts to support Ukraine where our loved ones are - a lot of our friends and family are inside Ukraine. We are going to continue this work as long as it is required. We really hope for your support.
Please do share this campaign with your friends and colleagues if you can.
Any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
Thank you!