Donetsk, Sep 19 - DAN. The international public organisation Fair Help on Tuesday sent 16 seriously ill DPR children to the Russian Federation for treatment. The bus with the patients started from the Republican Children’s Clinical Hospital (RDKB) towards the Russian border.

Acting DPR Minister of Youth, Sports and Tourism Alexander Gromakov, acting DPR Deputy Heath Care Minister Alexander Levchenko, DPR Operations Command deputy commander Eduard Basurin, Fair Helprepresentative Natalia Avilova, Faith, Hope and Love public organisation head Nadezhda Lupach and RDKB chief doctor Sergey Makarov saw the children off.

“The children have serious congenital disorders and chronic nervous, ophthalmic and oncological diseases,” Avilova told reporters. “All necessary medical assistance will be provided to the children at Moscow and Petersburg hospitals. A Russian Emergency Situations Ministry plane is awaiting us in Rostov-on-Don. The children will arrive in Moscow and Petersburg tonight.”

“The youngest patient is three months old, the oldest is 14,” she added.

“We’ve already been to Moscow; we’re taking repeated treatment. The first surgery was successful. The doctors saved my child who had hepatoblastoma. I’m very grateful to Doctor Liza and her Fund,” Maria Novikova whose son German is seriously ill, told DAN.

Fair Help was founded by Elizaveta Glinka, member of the Civil Society and Human Rights Council under the Russian president. During the Donbass conflict, she made arrangements for treatment in Moscow of almost 500 seriously ill children from DPR and LPR. Glinka was killed in the Tu-154 plane crash in Sochi area on 25 December 2016. Russian journalist, political writer Ksenia Sokolova took on Glinka’s cause.*jk