In 2024, a girl named Solomia was among the patients at the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Kyiv.
As her kidneys failed, she was receiving dialysis and waiting for a potential organ transplant.
“Every day we hoped that Solomia would get a kidney,” her mother, Oksana Fomenyuk, told RFE/RL. “But on July 8, it wasn't the kidney that arrived, but a Russian missile.”
The missile strike was part of a deadly wave of attacks on Ukraine that day, including assaults on civilian sites like the children’s hospital that drew international condemnation.
The attack on the Okhmatdyt hospital killed two people, one of whom was Solomia’s doctor.
Her mother rushed to look for her in the destroyed hospital wing, imagining the worst. “Before I found Solomia, I had said good-bye to her several times in my mind,” she said.
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’s life-saving surgery.
'This Smile Is What We Live For'
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.
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.
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.
“It’s been three months, and now she’s smiling. It’s this smile that we live for and work for,” he said.
Three months earlier, the war nearly shattered Kira’s hopes for recovery. Russian air strikes hit Kyiv just as a donor heart was being transported to Kira’s hospital.
“The alarm started around 10 p.m.,” her mother, Alyona Sklyarova, said. “I prayed all the time, because Kira couldn’t be moved, and there were big windows in her ward.”
Dr. Todurov oversaw the delivery of the organ. “The heart was transported during bombing and shelling. It was a terrifying night,” he said. “But we made it, as you can see. Here are the results.”
As families shared their gratitude with their medical teams, Sklyarova also extended her thanks to the donor whose heart saved Kira’s life.
“This is a miracle. We were saved by a little girl named Veronichka. She was 5 years old,” she said, adding that she had a good relationship with the girl’s family. “I will be grateful to her mother, Lyuba, for the rest of my life.”
For families at the event, the terror of living through a war has run in parallel with the stress of a child’s 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.
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.
