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Opening Doors with Charity Inner-city street children of Eastern Europe gain confidence in our newly established medical clinic. What would you do if your child came to you with a broken hand and there was no place to bring him for an X-ray and proper treatment? When Nicholas came to us with a broken hand we brought him to a nearby hospital for treatment but they refused to see him, even after we offered to pay them in cash. To say the least they treated Nicholas very harshly. The young patients coming to our social center are very different than “normal” kids of the same age. They are homeless, runaways, and orphaned boys and girls from ages 11 to 18. Many of them are seriously sick with HIV, Hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases. Bruises, broken bones, wounds, respiratory problems and lice are quite common. The city we are in has many state operated clinics, but they are of no use to the children. These clinics do not accept them simply because they do not have proper documentation. Many of our children were repeatedly refused when they were seeking help in the state clinics. Another example is when we convinced Sasha to register as an HIV positive patient in a center specializing in HIV/AIDS. They outrightly refused him because he had no official documents. After this experience he completely lost his confidence in the state health system and refused ever to go back. It is no longer surprising to us that the street children develop such a high level of mistrust and fear toward state medical establishments. Working in our center we soon realized how extremely important it is to earn the children’s trust. They usually come to our center after spending the night in terrible attics or cellars coping with social and psychological pain by sniffing glue or using other drugs. Some of those that come are so tired that they fall asleep while waiting for their food. After the children wash their hands, eat a good meal and start to play in our playroom they change significantly. They are more relaxed and feel better about themselves. We are able to treat their medical complaints. However, the medical care we are currently able to provide is limited. We are working out of one room, only have basic equipment, and a limited supply of medicines. When the children have more serious problems like broken bones, serious infections, and abdominal pains, we need to perform lab tests or to keep them for a couple of days for observation. We don’t have the capability to do this yet and therefore have to refer them to a hospital. But as we said before this is where their medical care ends because the system fails them. This is why we need to expand our one room clinic into a fully equipped small hospital. This is an essential step which will allow us to care for the children completely. The cost of this is $650,000. This will allow us to purchase a building, make necessary renovations, buy medical equipment, acquire licenses and meet other necessary expenses. We currently have a team of five medical professionals including three doctors, a pharmacist and an optometrist who all donate their time voluntarily – receiving no salary. this saves us over 60% of operating costs. We need your help to expand our medical facility in order to create more positive solutions for hundreds of kids like Nicholas and Sasha. |