In 2024, a young girl named Solomia was among the patients at the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv.<\/p>\n
As her kidneys failed, she was receiving dialysis and waiting for a potential organ transplant.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day we hoped that Solomia would get a kidney,\u201d her mother, Oksana Fomenyuk, told RFE\/RL. \u201cBut on July 8, it wasn’t the kidney that arrived, but a Russian missile.\u201d<\/p>\n
The missile strike was part of a deadly wave of attacks on Ukraine that day, including assaults on civilian sites like the children\u2019s hospital that drew international condemnation.<\/p>\n
The attack on the Okhmatdyt hospital killed two people, one of whom was Solomia\u2019s doctor.<\/p>\n
Her mother rushed to look for her in the destroyed hospital wing, imagining the worst. \u201cBefore I found Solomia, I had said good-bye to her several times in my mind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But Solomia survived and was transferred to a hospital in Lviv for further treatment. The following spring, after a three-year wait, the moment arrived that she and her family had hoped for: a donor kidney was available for Solomia\u2019s life-saving surgery.<\/p>\n
‘This Smile Is What We Live For’<\/strong><\/p>\n On October 17, Solomia and her mother were among the guests at an event in Kyiv called the Breakfast of Gratitude, a gathering for young organ transplant patients and their families.<\/p>\n In a city scarred by war, it was a rare occasion to celebrate. Children were invited to make pancakes and share a sweet meal with the doctors who conducted their surgeries and oversaw their recovery.<\/p>\n Borys Todurov, a surgeon and the director of The Heart Institute of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, greeted a heart-transplant patient named Kira with a warm hug.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been three months, and now she\u2019s smiling. It\u2019s this smile that we live for and work for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Three months earlier, the war nearly shattered Kira\u2019s hopes for recovery. Russian air strikes hit Kyiv just as a donor heart was being transported to Kira\u2019s hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThe alarm started around 10 p.m.,\u201d her mother, Alyona Sklyarova, said. \u201cI prayed all the time, because Kira couldn\u2019t be moved, and there were big windows in her ward.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Todurov oversaw the delivery of the organ. \u201cThe heart was transported during bombing and shelling. It was a terrifying night,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we made it, as you can see. Here are the results.\u201d<\/p>\n As families shared their gratitude with their medical teams, Sklyarova also extended her thanks to the young donor whose heart saved Kira\u2019s life.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a miracle. We were saved by a little girl named Veronichka. She was 5 years old,\u201d she said, adding that she had a good relationship with the girl\u2019s family. \u201cI will be grateful to her mother, Lyuba, for the rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n For families at the event, the terror of living through a war has run in parallel with the stress of a child\u2019s serious illness. And recovery has hinged on long waits for donor organs while families try to access treatment through the many disruptions caused by the conflict.<\/p>\n But the celebration in Kyiv meant a chance for kids to leave their ordeals behind as they hugged their doctors and shared breakfast with their families.<\/p>\n\n