PROJECT “ International Family Medicine Clinic of Uzhgorod (IFMCU)”

1. To assist Ukrainian refugees with essential/basic needs,The Corvallis Sister City Association-Uzhhorod Council (CSCA-U) has created The Uzhhorod Refugee Fund (“URF”).The objective was to raise a combined $500,000 through donations made to accounts established at Citizens Bank in Corvallis, OR and GoFundMe. 

   Using this Fund we decided to start “taming” of our potential patients from the adjacent hostels-shelters  even before we launched the Clinic. Besides, we thought  that  the visit of our dear friends from the USA  Mark and Alice Rampton to Uzhhorod  would be a good opportunity  to announce about the start of our Clinic through the local media. The idea was to involve refugee children living at the hostels and the children artists from the Palace of Youth Creativity  into improving  the territory surrounding the hostels. We decided to decorate in paint the ramps leading to the hostels with the national flags of Ukraine, the USA, the European Union. This  action has to symbolize the gratitude of our people for the  help in the fight against the Russian invaders.We have invited volunteer doctors, residents and artists and art teachers from the Palace, whole families living at the hostels,local media. We have financed paints and all necessary instruments, gloves and aprons and let the children create at their own discretion. Dozens of people  including  American guests took part in the event too. That was a holiday of the Clinic launch !

    

2. If you remember our Project, we planned to invite  foreign family medicine experts, who were  to provide free hands-on consultations and demonstrations for the local family medicine trainees and students? We started  putting this idea into practice already thanks to Dr Mark Rampton and  Dr William Chickering taking advantage of their visiting Uzhhorod.
3. Dr Rampton basing on his personal private Clinic experience  gave us rather valuable consultation on the justified structure of a new premises  which was in fact the eighth variant that we have regarded and we hope would be the last one. Next week we start the reconstruction works.
4. Beside providing medications Dr Rapmton from the USA and Mr Chickering from France have brought some medical instruments for the future Clinic that can be already used  in medical treatment and teaching of our residents and senior students. 

The following is an abstract, of ,so to say,   “a view from the outside on Uzhhorod today”  by Alice Rampton.  

“To walk down the street, you would think that all is well and a war must be in another country. But then you hear of a funeral for two soldiers yesterday, you see many more soldiers on the streets, more policia presence, Ukrainian flags everywhere, and many more people and traffic as Uzhhorod works hard to accommodate the displaced persons. It’s uncanny and the air raid siren brings you back to reality. Plus the discussions around the table or with individuals always turn back to the war. Today I visited with about 8 women in one of the shelters and learned their stories about leaving their homes in the East and coming west. One was fleeing from the war for the second time after moving from the Luhansk region to Kharkiv. One knows that her home is destroyed. One had lost family members back in 2014. That brings reality up close.

We’ve been able to see the fruits of the Uzhhorod Refugee Fund at various places . Today, we helped deliver a refrigerator, drying racks (oft requested item for laundry), coffee pots, pressure cookers, ironing board and iron, dishes, etc. to one shelter with about 10 moms and 20 kids. Great bunch of women with hardship stories but working together to create a good environment for all. We’ve gotten out games (Twister, Connect Four, Memory, Uno) and puzzles and coloring pages and had fun times playing with the kids. Then we leave those activities with them”.