Kateryna Yushchenko announced at a press conference in UNIAN on Tuesday her foundation, Ukraine 3000, has so far collected UAH 250,228,000 to build a Children’s Hospital of the Future in Kyiv, according to the President`s press-office.
The First Lady thanked Ukraine’s mass media, TV channels in particular, for their assistance. She said last week’s nationwide TV marathon had broken many records: it was watched by a record number of viewers and televised by a record number of channels, and helped raise a record sum.
Mrs. Yushchenko said the fundraising campaign had, in fact, just begun, expressing hopes many more donors and philanthropists would join in.
“The TV marathon helped us fulfill the important mission of restoring trust in charitable giving. I am proud of how Ukrainians responded to the event. It shows we are real Europeans,” she said.
Ukraine 3000 Press Secretary Maryna Antonova said the project had been supported by fifteen television channels, which broadcast its ad 3,745 times without charge.
It was telecast live on UT-1, ICTV, Tonis, Channel 24, Channel 5, K1 and NTN and partly on Ukraina, Novy Kanal, TET and 1+1 (UT-1, K1, NTN and Channel 24 broadcast it without commercial breaks), and watched by 8.5 people, according to GfK.
Oleksandr Maksymchuk, Head of the Ukraine 3000 Board, revealed their plans. The facility will have 250 beds, a diagnostic department, a radiology complex, a boarding house and a dormitory for its personnel, a park with playgrounds, and parking lots for cars, ambulances and helicopters.
250 beds:
60 beds / perinatal care
70 beds / hematology
40 beds / oncology
30 beds / surgery
30 beds / pediatrics
20 beds / emergency care
Kateryna Yushchenko’s Advisor, Andriy Myroshnichenko, said: “We are very happy about how our citizens reacted to this project.”
He said the foundation was going to launch a new campaign and hold fundraisers abroad. He also announced there would be a contest to employ the hospital’s head doctor in February, 2007. The foundation is now holding talks with the National Television Company of Ukraine to air a weekly program on how the project develops, he added.
