Activists start crowdfunding campaign to purchase a vehicle that would serve as a mobile blood transfusion station in the combat zone. Further plans include setup of the blood bank and expanding the project to nationwide scales as part of emergency medicine.
Volunteers of “Krovomobil” (blood transfusion vehicle – eng.) project – activists of the Charity Fund “Club Dyvosvit” and of the “Association of young donors of Ukraine” announce the start of crowdfunding to continue their work and expand the project. Crowdfunding starts today on the online platform “People’s Project”, explained project organizers at a press-briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “Our aim is to try and raise over UAH 450 thousand (approx. USD 17 thousand) over December-February to purchase a new Volkswagen transporter T5 with equipment that will serve as a mobile blood transfusion unit. […] We will be very grateful to everyone who will join our project,” noted Maksym Ryabokon, coordinator of All-Ukrainian volunteer center People’s Project.
The vehicle is a mobile blood transfusion station that transports blood from deep rear to the frontline preserving the special temperature regime. The principle of the vehicle’s operation is to deliver blood to the casualty within the so-called “golden hour”. “Casualties in the combat zone are always related to blood loss, deaths of warfighters often result exactly from blood loss. There are blood banks in hospitals and in mobile operating rooms, however closer to the frontline where there are casualties there are no such reserves. We are practicing the concept that medics would be able to use to bring blood to the casualty. The quicker they will start compensating the blood loss, the bigger the chances are that the patient is going to survive,” explained Dr. Rostyslav Zauralsky, project author and advisor to the Healthcare Minister of Ukraine.
The first blood transfusion vehicle has been in operation for about two years now and has driven for over 40 thousand kilometers both in the rear and on the frontline. Over this time it has transported more than 100 liters of blood and its components from Kremenchuk, Poltava and Kharkiv that could save lives of 200 people.
However the vehicle itself as well as its refrigeration units have been heavily used and now require repair almost after each trip. Moreover one vehicle is not enough to arrive in time on the spot along the entire contact line.
Raising the abovementioned half a million hryvnia is the project’s first stage. At its second stage volunteers will be raising money to renovate the equipment inside the vehicle that is currently working in the combat zone, explained Oksana Tyupa, head of board at the charity fund “Club Dyvosvit”. Third stage will include the purchase of four mobile stations that would store and transfuse blood and will work in the rear storing blood and plasma both for the needs in combat zone and for civilians in case of emergency. “We are presenting it as a nationwide project, because we want to test it as a pilot one and then implement it as a permanent project to develop emergency medicine,” Tyupa noted.
Maksym Ryabokon noted that volunteers would much appreciate donations by representatives of business community. “I would like to see machinery companies like Volkswagen and Mercedes among our partners, sponsors and co-organizers that could also help us implement all the three stages of the project,” he said.
