Solomia Fomeniuk, 16, was in the midst of life-saving dialysis treatment at a children’s hospital in Kyiv last month, when it was suddenly blasted with a deadly missile strike.
Covered in blood, she was carried out on a stretcher from the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital — Ukraine’s largest medical facility for children, her mother told CBC News. The hospital is believed to have been struck by a Russian missile during a massive daytime barrage on July 8, killing 44 civilians throughout the country. Of those, two adults were killed in the hospital attack, including one doctor.
“We have no peaceful life, feel there is nowhere safe in Ukraine, not in the shelters, not in a children’s hospital,” her mother, Oksana Fomeniuk, told CBC News.
“We will never know how many children may die because they can no longer turn to Ohmadyt for care.”
The destruction of the facility drew international condemnation and prompted the Canada-Ukraine Foundation in Toronto to take action by setting up a fundraiser to help purchase new machines and equipment for the hospital. So far, it has raised more than $700,000 with a target goal of $1 million, as the hospital works to rebuild and return to its normal operations.
“It’s essential that we’re able as Canadians to contribute to the rebuilding of that hospital so that it can start receiving children at the same capacity [as] before the bombing,” said Valeriy Kostyuk, the foundation’s executive director.
The machine Fomeniuk had been using that day was one of the dialysis machines donated by the foundation.
“Imagine we as Canadians — as Torontonians — lose the ability to have, you know, SickKids [hospital],” Kostyuk told CBC News. “God forbid this would ever happen in Canada. But it’s like losing this whole entire institution.”
Russia has denied responsibility for the hospital strike, insisting it doesn’t attack civilian targets in Ukraine despite abundant evidence to the contrary, including reporting by The Associated Press. But the United Nations rights mission said last week there was a “high likelihood” that Ohmatdyt hospital took a direct hit from a Russian missile.
‘Strain and urgency is real’
In 2022, the Canada-Ukraine Foundation sent 17 dialysis machines to Ukraine, and Kostyuk said it hopes to send more through the money raised. Kostyuk said it has sent roughly $80 million worth of humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2014.
“Without undergoing hemodialysis three times a week, these children will not survive for more than three days,” the organization said in a news release on Aug. 8.
The 10-storey hospital was caring for 627 patients at the time of the attack, according to the country’s health minister.
The Ukraine-Canada Foundation said the patients are currently receiving treatment at another hospital, where dialysis machines are used in four shifts due to limited equipment availability.
“The strain and the urgency is real to help Ukrainians be able to sustain the flow of patients and to be able to provide the life-saving support that is needed,” Kostyuk said.
Born with chronic renal failure, Solomia was admitted to the pediatric hospital in May 2022. She would travel from Rivne in western Ukraine to Kyiv for treatment dialysis three times a week, which lasts about four to five hours at a time.
“[Without dialysis] she wilts, becomes feeble, has no appetite, no energy, no life force, it’s hard on her body,” her mother said.
Hospital attack a devastation to patients’ families
At the time of the attack, her mother had to flee to the hospital’s basement shelter. Solomia was in the dialysis unit, where her mother could not get to her.
Fomeniuk says the attack on the hospital has been a devastation to families that relied on the facility for its highly specialized medical care. The assault interrupted heart surgeries, forcing children being treated at the hospital for cancer treatment and dialysis, to run for cover.
Following the attack, the children, including Solomia, were moved to other hospitals but some suffered shrapnel injuries, the foundation said.
“She had blood in her eyeball and her legs were scratched up from the cement falling from the ceiling,” her mother said.
Dana Bagan, a medical coordinator with the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, said all children were removed from the hospital, with many undergoing dialysis at the time of the attack.
“This was something that was kind of unfathomable to attack children that were, you know, already vulnerable, already having to travel for treatment. Many of them were not local,” Bagan said.
A barrage of Russian missile attacks against Kyiv largely destroyed the Ukrainian city’s largest children’s hospital and left other buildings in the city in ruins. Dozens have been killed in the airstrikes that may have been timed to coincide with NATO meetings.
As the hospital works to rebuild and repair its facility, Fomeniuk said she will remain with her daughter.
Our lives will not be the same. With every siren warning, we are anxious,” she said.
“It’s hard enough for me, but even more for the kids, they are crying because it’s painful for them. It’s a terrible noise and they are already sick and now terrified.”