Lab Reagents for Ukrainian Children's Hospital

The war in Ukraine is still raging, with hundreds of children dead, thousands injured, and millions in need of humanitarian aid and assistance. The target children’s hospital of our next campaign is Western Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Centre (WUSCMC), which treats 7000 to 7500 critically ill children that have cancer, rare diseases, or require organ transplants, annually.

Our goal is to raise $2000 to purchase critical lab reagents such as DNA typing trays, agarose, TBE Buffer, and Taq Polymerase. These reagents are utilized to determine organ-donor compatibility in WUSCMC’s newly constructed PCR laboratory for children, one of only two in the entire country. 11 kidney transplants have already been performed, and 6-7 are planned until the end of the year, with 1 transplant being performed per month. At this rate, at least 12 children are saved every year. With every dollar you donate, you give these children a second chance at life.

The exact lab reagents, along with their individual costs, are listed below, and were requested by the hospital directly to Wings of Hope (Kryla Nadiyi, or Крила Надії). We’ve been working closely with them since the previous campaign. For more information about them, please see the bottom of this post.

The total cost of all the reagents is approximately $8346.25. Although not enough to cover the entire cost, our organization hopes to raise at least $2000 to ease the hospital’s burden.

3 Micro SSP Generic HLA Class I and II ABDR DNA Typing Tray, SSPABDR

53,928.00 hryvnia or $1457.09 each

2 Micro SSP HLA Class I C Locus Specific DNA Typing Tray, SSP1C

23,031.75 hryvnia or $622.30 each

1 Micro SSP Generic HLA Class II DNA Typing Tray - DQB1 Only, SSP2LQB1

23,031.75 hryvnia or $622.30 each

2 TopVision Agarose (Catalog number: R0491)

10,680.00 hryvnia or $288.56 each

2 TBE Buffer (Tris-borate-EDTA) (10X) (Catalog number: B52)

4050.00 hryvnia or $109.43

4 Реагент Taq Polymerase, 50 мкл (ТАQ50)

11,970.00 hryvnia or $323.42 each

To those that do not know us: we are American Students for Health, a non-profit, grass-roots American student organization that focuses on fundraising for children's hospitals in Eastern Europe. We are cofounded by Daniel Razgonyaev, Alvin Baranov, and Niyazi Kyose.

Additional Information About the Hospital and Campaign

The laboratory in which these tests will be conducted, known as the HLA Laboratory of the Western Ukrainian Specialized Medical Center, launched its work in late March. The HLA laboratory quickly performs immuno-genetic examinations for patients before and after organ and bone marrow transplants, for children with cancer, those with kidney diseases and children with rare diseases. Hundreds of young patients get a chance to be treated at home, without wasting precious time on the results of vital examinations.

Although relatively new, this lab has already produced excellent results. Through the laboratory, a kidney donor had been found for a child, who underwent an organ transplant and will now live a normal child’s life without dialysis and constant weekly hour-long procedures. Our first hero’s name is Tarasyk and he is 9 years old.

In 2022-2023, the Western Ukrainian Specialized Medical Center (WUSCMC) accepted more than 2,400 children and provided consultative outpatient care to more than 12,300 internally displaced and evacuated patients from other regions of Ukraine. This trend of displacement will only continue, as hostilities and shelling of medical facilities make it impossible to treat seriously ill children with oncological, onco-hematological, and immunodeficiency diseases that need an organ transplant. Therefore, we completely support WUSCMC and are committed to raising the funds they need to save children’s lives.

We are in contact with Mrs. Lipska from "Wings of Hope" a Ukrainian-based charity organization dedicated to raising funds for seriously ill Ukrainian children. Our previous campaign in collaboration with this charity organization was successful in purchasing a high-quality vein-finder as well as phototherapy lamps for bilirubinemia. All funds raised in this campaign will be sent to Wing's of Hope, which will cooperate with a certified company to purchase and send the reagents to the hospital directly.

American Students for Health remains strongly committed to providing integrity and transparency to everyone, donors or not. If you have any questions or doubts, feel free to contact us at [email redacted], on our Facebook, or on our Instagram. Please explore our website for our previous campaigns and our staff.