Ukrainian SoftServe and Superhumans companies launch US-backed mission to provide prosthetics to military and civilians
Ukrainian IT company SoftServe and the Superhumans Rehabilitation Center have launched a training mission to provide prosthetics to Ukrainians affected by the war, both military and civilian.
The initiative is supported by the US doctors from the Medical Center for Orthotics and Prosthetics (Maryland, USA), who will train Ukrainian specialists to work with complex amputations and prosthetics cases.
The project was launched on August 21. American doctors spent the first ten days in Lviv at the Superhumans Center, where they shared their expertise with Ukrainian doctors and worked on proper treatment for patients.
The SoftServe company admits it had been working on this partnership for a year. Worth 1 million dollars, the project will cover all needs of war-affected Ukrainians, as the chosen US doctors are considered best in the prosthetics field.
We have launched this project where we can simultaneously train our medics and prosthetize patients. The first goal was to work with 10 patients, but in the end we were able to help 23. We planned that the second stage of the mission would be held in the US, but we decided on hosting it in Ukraine again, says Olga Rudneva, CEO of Superhumans Center.
In such a short period of time, the Superhumans team doubled the number of patients who will leave the center with a completely new life, which is fantastic. In the future, we will develop protocols that will improve the expertise among Ukrainian doctors and help more patients, comments Anastasia Frolova, SoftServe Ukraine manager.
This is the beginning of an extraordinary adventure where we will work and help with the most difficult cases and be able to provide patients with a better quality of life. We are happy to work with Ukrainian doctors, they have learned something from us, but we have also learned a lot from them, says Ian Fothergill, prosthetist, Chief Operating Officer of the US medical facility.
He stressed the goal is to work with the Superhumans team across Ukraine to improve their knowledge and avoid previous mistakes. The prosthetics procedures are completely different now, unlike nearly 20 years ago.
The mission will last until the end of the year, with several more stages of joint US-Ukrainian exercises to be held. More than 30 patients will receive treatment as part of the mission.
Superhumans is a newly created clinic for prosthetics, rehabilitation, and reconstructive surgery for war-injured military and civilians affected. All services at the clinic are free of charge for patients. International donors and partners fund the center.
The first center was opened five months ago near Lviv. In the coming years, the project will open five more centers in different cities in Ukraine: Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Rivne, and Dnipro.
The US center is known for its challenging operations with the US military, as it cooperates with the US Department of Defense. The center's doctors have prosthetically treated more than 1,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and annually treat more than 350 patients on average.
According to Ukraine's social ministry, around 59,000 citizens have reached out to the institution for prosthetic help in six months. Only in July alone, the ministry received 201 proposals for prosthetics with a total cost of $1,3 million.
