The Ukraine-3000 Foundation has implemented the medical program “From Hospital to Hospital,” instituted a medal “For the Development of National Cinema,” organized the “Dreamland” international ethnic festival and the Vladimir Horowitz International Young Pianists’ Competition, issued a CD of ancient lullabies, organized the exhibit “Christmas: the Colors and Melodies of a Ukrainian Feast.” It also publishes Ukrayinsky muzei, a monthly newspaper for museum employees.
This is far from the complete list of projects that have been carried out by this international charitable foundation. Founded by Viktor Yushchenko in 2001, the foundation is active in three areas: “Yesterday” deals with the problems of Ukrainian history and culture; “Today” looks at the social needs of our society; and “Tomorrow” is aimed at identifying new values and prospects.
The president’s wife, Kateryna Yushchenko, ended her one-year term as chairwoman of the foundation’s supervisory board at the beginning of this month. On this occasion, Mrs. Yushchenko granted an interview to The Day and three other major newspapers, in which she summed up the results of the past year and outlined plans for 2006.
“As you know, the Ukraine-3000 Foundation was founded by my husband Viktor Yushchenko in 2001. Last year I was asked to take over as chairwoman of the supervisory board, which we have somewhat reshuffled. We admitted some new people whom we consider authorities in Ukraine (Mykhailyna Kotsiubynska, Anatoliy Khostikoyev, Myroslav Popovych, Vitaliy and Volodymyr Klychko, and Oleh Skrypka — Ed.). The general direction of our programs has remained the same.
I think medicine is now one of my priorities. I saw that I could effect certain changes in this field together with the state. There are corporations, organizations, and individuals who want to help us and many of them have already helped people. We decided to take an integrated approach to this issue. I understood this only too well early last year, when I visited the hematology department of the Ukrainian specialized children’s clinic ‘Okhmadyt’ and saw the horrible conditions in this medical institution: a leaky roof, fungus, etc.
Parents took me to a ward and said that every day the cleaning woman lifts some parts of the parquet, mops underneath it, and puts them back. How can you treat children in such conditions? So the foundation applied for funds to repair the roof. Then we thought: why should we spend a million hryvnias on a new roof if everything should be replaced in this building.
“As part of our program ‘From Hospital to Hospital,’ we are planning to build a modern medical institution in Kyiv, called the National Mother and Child Health Center. This project is aimed at improving the treatment of children from all Ukrainian regions and developing highly specialized types of pediatric care. This will be a 300-bed, multipurpose children’s clinic that will have the best material resources and highly effective treatment and diagnostic techniques.
This hospital will treat children with the most complicated illnesses, such as tumors, various types of cancer, difficult somatic and surgical cases, and perinatal lesions. I dream about this center becoming the best one in Eastern Europe. We plan to build it in three years with money from Ukrainian and foreign corporations. We already have several partners. We will also probably be applying to equipment-designing firms. I talk about this project wherever I go, particularly with diplomats from various countries.”
“A few months ago Kyiv’s Mayor Oleksandr Omelchenko said that there is an unfinished construction project in Troyeshchyna, where he would suggest building a children’s center like this. There is also the huge complex of the Institute of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology and ‘Okhmadyt.’”
“I think Mr. Omelchenko said this after speaking with us. We saw the unfinished site in Troyeshchyna, which started to be built in the 1980s. The premises are huge but they were not built to modern standards. It would be several times more expensive to finish and modernize it than to build a new hospital. I have visited children’s hospitals in Japan, France, Britain, Austria, Poland, and the US. There is a very modern institution in Tokyo in which 460 million was invested. It was opened two years ago and is completely computerized: information about every child (blood pressure, blood counts, etc.) is stored in a computer data base to which any doctor has access. I very much like a hospital in Chicago that was built in February 2005. But it is privately run, so medical treatment there is very expensive.
“It is important that everything is done there with their young patients in mind. For example, kids come for a checkup and see giraffes and baby elephants with the equipment hidden inside. The hospital administrators told me that both the radiological and administrative wings have large doors: they said that in 20 years’ time, when there will be new radiology technology, they will shift the administrative unit elsewhere and expand the radiology wing. I thought: they are doing their best to ensure that their clinic will be modern even 20-40 years from now, while we are still hesitating whether to renovate structures that were built 30 years ago.”
“Will treatment at the National Mother and Child Health Center be free of charge?”
“Yes, for Ukrainians. We would like to attract not only government funds. All the foreign medical institutions that we visited display platinum, silver, and bronze plaques with the names of donors. I do not think that a hospital can exist without benefactors.
“Two weeks from now the Ukraine-3000 Foundation will hold a three-day conference to which we have invited doctors from Ukrainian hospitals under our patronage — we selected one from each region on a competitive basis. First of all, we intend to find a foreign partner (a foundation, organization, hospital, or university) to cooperate with us, namely, to improve the information base, supply equipment, and provide professional upgrading.
“I applied to many hospitals in Austria, Britain, Switzerland, and the US, and none of them turned me down. Of course, they all have different possibilities. At the very minimum they will invite our doctors for professional upgrading, provided the foundation pays for round-trip tickets. Others are prepared to furnish specialists. Our Western partners are also coming to the conference. We will tell the conference about the National Mother and Child Health Center project and we’ll bury a commemorative capsule on the territory of Feofania Hospital. My husband and I think it is unjust that this medical institution only serves the elite. Last year I had a mammogram there and asked how many people they get every day. Four or five patients, they said. Meanwhile, women all over Ukraine are dying of breast cancer!”
“Mrs. Yushchenko, is the foundation going to carry out projects in aid of rural women and children, since they live in far more difficult conditions than urban residents?”
“As a matter of fact, the regional hospitals that I mentioned also treat rural children. I discussed the need to establish first-aid and maternity stations in the countryside with ex-health minister Mykola Polishchuk and the current minister Yuriy Poliachenko. We have also received four ambulances from Proctor & Gamble and donated them to daycare facilities in various regions of Ukraine. They are specially intended to transport rural children to hospitals in proper medical conditions.
We are now launching a new program. Via the Ukrainian Medical Association whose membership includes all Ukrainian doctors in the Diaspora, the Canadians are sending one million dollars to build two modern medical institutions in the countryside with a complete set of equipment and emergency, dental, gynecological, obstetric, and pediatric units. Canadian specialists are ready to come and train our doctors. The other day we discussed where they will be built.
Ukraine-3000 will hold another competition, and it will be clear why we chose, say, Sumy or Poltava oblast. We also have another village-oriented program. A foreign patron, Hryhoriy Malynovsky, has purchased 12,000 copies of the Ukrainian-language book Mother and Child, which will be distributed strictly among young or expectant mothers. Information about this publication is available at prenatal advisory stations. Obviously, a lot of letters with requests to send this manual are coming from rural girls.”
“In 2007 at the UN Ukraine is going to raise the question of recognizing the 1932-1933 manmade famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. How are you planning this year to boost the program ‘Lessons of History: the Holodomor of 1932-1933’ in order to raise the level of awareness among Ukrainians?”
“This subject touches every Ukrainian family. My father, who was raised in Donbas, witnessed this horror, and my mother, who was five years old at the time, nearly died of starvation. Unfortunately, the world knows a lot about the Holocaust but very little about the Ukrainian Holodomor.
I remember meeting the American James Mace, one of those who publicly revealed the truth about this tragedy in the early 1980s (last year our newspaper published the book Day and Eternity of James Mace to which Mrs. Yushchenko contributed an article — Ed.). He came to Washington, where I was the head of the local branch of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. In 1983, on the 50th anniversary of this tragic date, we took part in a large-scale memorial action that gathered about 30,000 people. I was in contact with him all those years — from 1983 to 1988.
“In fact, when my husband was establishing the foundation, one of the tasks of Ukraine-3000 was to spotlight the Holodomor in our country and abroad. To this end, we launched the first and so far the only Ukrainian-language Internet site devoted to this topic. In 2003 we organized the ‘Candle in the Window’ action. That was when I first heard from Mace that they were going to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor and political repressions in Ukraine on the last Saturday of November by placing lighted candles in windows. Last year the central television channels showed two documentaries made with our assistance: the two-part Holodomor, Ukraine, 20th Century (this year will see part three) and Forbidden to Live. We also helped make 25 social video clips.
This year we are planning to publish a large number of informational brochures about the famine for schools, libraries, and civic organizations, and to republish the 1985 US book Holodomor of 1932-1933 by Nadia Diuk. We are also translating Robert Conquest’s famous works Harvest of Sorrow and The Great Terror.
“We want to cooperate with the state in this matter and help it set up the Holodomor and Political Repressions Research Center and the Holodomor Museum. We will also join the International Conference organization on the 75th anniversary of the tragedy. When my husband was prime minister six years ago, he went to Sweden for a workshop on the Holocaust. He told me that he was amazed by the work of one Swedish woman. When she conducted a survey and learned that many people in her country were unaware of the genocide of the Jews, she published a book and presented a copy to almost every family.
I too would like to see monarchs, presidents, premiers, and ministers coming to us from all over the world to honor the memory of the innocent Ukrainians who died in the 1930s. To tell the truth, 1933 has not disappeared into oblivion, it is still present in us at the psychological level and to some extent at the physical one.”
