Just four days after a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s leading hospital for children, the floors of Okhmatdyt’s main building looked surprisingly spotless.
The dust and shattered glass from the devastating blast that defaced the building were wiped out. Damaged furniture was removed, and the staff wearing clean scrubs rushed along the well-lit corridors. At first glance, things seemed almost normal, if not for the absence of patients.
The attack on July 8, which killed 2 people and injured 32 more while likely traumatizing scores of children, damaged most of the hospital compound’s buildings but to various degrees. A smaller toxicology unit directly hit by the missile was destroyed. The bigger main facility, whose decade-long reconstruction had been completed just before Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, was heavily damaged with its once colorful facade of windows and siding blown in or dented by the blast.
But Russia’s latest attack in its genocidal war against Ukraine demonstrated that Ukrainians continue to unite and resist in the face of such brutality. Thousands of volunteers have amassed to save their fellow citizens and later to help rebuild the hospital.
They gathered in the hours and days after the strike to clear the rubble, send donations, collect aid, and restore the basic infrastructure of the hospital, gradually bringing it back to life.
“First, I thought that it would take weeks, months to restore the electricity, water, and medical gases,” Volodymyr Zhovnir, Okhmatdyt’s CEO said on July 12 after a memorial event was held with a small orchestra playing for the staff outside, against the backdrop of a half-destroyed building.
“But we got the water back on the second day (after the attack). On the second day, the electricity was back on, too. And on the third day, ventilation was restored,” Zhovnir added.
Serhii Chernyshuk, Okhmatdyt’s medical director, said the immediate priority for the hospital, which performed over 9,000 operations per year before the attack, is to restore the functionality of its newest building. The aim is to get it once again providing all the hospital's basic services, though on “a slightly smaller scale than before,” he added.
"This building is best preserved, and most importantly, 95% of our high-tech services, equipment, and so on are concentrated here,” Chernyshuk told the Kyiv Independent.
“If we restore it, we will restore what we call Okhmatdyt. Okhmatdyt is not a space, not a territory. Primarily, it is specialists and the high-tech medical services they provide,” he said.
After 94 children were transferred to other Kyiv hospitals to continue treatment in the aftermath of the attack, some doctors and nurses of Okhmatdyt followed.
“Our staff is treating them there, and we are tidying up here in the meantime,” said Valentyna Mariash, chief nurse from Okhmatdyt’s oncology department who has been daily visiting children relocated at the National Cancer Institute.
Photographs of bald children with drug dispensers sitting alongside the hospital’s wall immediately after the attack drew outrage internationally and triggered fresh condemnation of Russia by Ukraine’s Western allies.
Bringing them back to a functional Okhmatdyt capable of providing top-level care was the main priority. When the blood donation center was relaunched on the morning of July 12, Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Liashko announced plans for some children to return to the oncology department as soon as possible. On July 13, CEO Zhovnir announced that 50 oncology patients were again staying at Okhmatdyt.
"It was extremely important for us to restore the services that are necessary in any ward,” said Chernyshuk on the day when children started to return to the cancer department.
“If there is no blood, or if it is impossible to take an X-ray, or if the sterilization department is not working, we cannot do anything. We have gradually restored them,” he added.
Another primary task at the hospital is assessing the cost to repair the damage.
Days after the attack, the Health Ministry announced that it would take at least Hr 400 million (around $10 million) to replace the damaged equipment at Okhmatdyt. Chernyshuk warned that the amount of funds needed may change significantly, as it was calculated using the hospital's prices for the equipment years ago.
Since the day of the attack, donations have been pouring in from individuals and companies, reaching around Hr 800 million (nearly $20 million) by July 12, according to Health Minister Liashko.
However, “not a dime from the donations has been spent yet,” Chernyshuk told the Kyiv Independent on July 15. Between signing off on lists of equipment that needs to be replaced for each damaged ward, he coordinates with donors in Ukraine and abroad who are willing to help the hospital by purchasing the items themselves, sometimes through personal connections that allow them to buy cheaper than the market value.
Chernyshuk said the lists of required equipment are not public to avoid situations when donors independently buy items that don’t fit the hospital’s requirements. According to him, treating children with difficult conditions calls for more advanced equipment.
“For example, let’s take a Mercedes E-Class. It can be equipped with nothing, or it can come packed with features and cost three times more. It's the same with equipment to treat children,” Chernyshuk said.
The cost of repairing Okhmatdyt's damaged buildings can be even higher. On July 16, over a week after the attack, the experts were still working to calculate the approximate sum. Some hospital staff and donors said the donations collected so far are insufficient to cover the needs.
Maryna Poroshenko, a Kyiv city legislator, wife of Ukraine’s former president, and head of the Poroshenko charity, said their foundation had been gradually helping to renew one of the hospital’s buildings since 2013. She worries about an assessment underway to determine whether the building, over 50 years old and heavily damaged, is to be rebuilt from scratch.
“God forbid to demolish it,” Poroshenko told the Kyiv Independent in a recent interview.
“Entering such a long and expensive project during the war will hurt the children who won’t be able to receive help, and it will be really difficult to preserve the staff.”
Construction of Okhmatdyt’s newest and biggest building, which was completed in 2021, took 10 years. The process was tainted by corruption scandals during the government of former pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted by the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014, and continued under the government of his successor, Petro Poroshenko. CEO Zhovnir said hospital management hoped that “all the procedures will be as open and understandable as possible” during the restoration.
Officials say that shortly after the damage assessment is finished, Okhmatdyt, together with the Health Ministry, will choose the construction company to rebuild the hospital.
“The one who offers the best price is the one who will probably do it,” Chernyshuk said. While he was not directly responsible for choosing the contractor, he said that the hospital would ask the biggest construction companies in Ukraine to make price offers.
“This can only be done efficiently and quickly by a company with extensive resources and experience. Let's just say there are not many of such companies,” he said.
While reluctant to ask for more money as the repair assessment is underway, CEO Zhovnir hopes that more big donors will offer assistance in the hospital’s reconstruction.
“We have lost one building. Another is in poor condition. Part of the new building is in a very rough state, and the heating station has been lost,” he told the Kyiv Independent. “There are big problems in the buildings farther away. How many millions – not even hryvnias, but dollars – do you think it will take to restore at least this?”
Yet hope that the hospital doors could fully reopen sooner rose on July 16, over a week after the attack. Chernyshuk said that Okhmatdyt is accepting patients again for urgent surgeries.
“We are not talking about a full recovery yet,” he cautioned.
