We began working with ‘Children in Trouble‘ (CIT), the National Children’s Cancer charity based in Minsk, in 1997. We delivered humanitarian aid to them to pass on to their families, and invited children in remission from cancer for recuperative holidays.
Evgeny Ukraintsev was the director of CiT until 2018, when he retired and Vera Gakova took over. Treatment for children with cancer in Belarus is generally very good and successful. But there have been times over the years when a medicine was urgently needed and was simply not available in Belarus. We were able on many occasions to buy the medicine and deliver it to Minsk.
We were sometimes able to support the hospital with purchases of equipment to improve the quality of life for parents who stay there with their children – a television or microwave, for example, or tables where the children do arts and crafts, to keep them entertained and help to pass the time.
We have invited hundreds of children in remission from cancer for recuperative holidays, many of them either teenagers or very young children with their mums, as these were the two age groups which were not receiving invites from charities in other countries.
We cannot bring children for holidays at present, but we still support Children in Trouble in their work to help families get through the trauma of cancer treatment for their child.
