On October 26, 2024, the All-Ukrainian Conference on Transplantology and Organ Donation in Ukraine – “The Heart Beats” was held for the first time, that brought together representatives of the authorities, doctors, patients, and relative donors to draw attention to the importance of the development of transplantation.

The main part of the event was the meeting of the heart transplant patients and families of donors. It was thanks to their noble and at the same time difficult decision that the doctors were able to save these patients. Among them are Lyudmila, a mother of 3 children, whose heart began to fail only a month after giving birth, Maksym, who was the first child in Ukraine to undergo a heart transplant at the age of 13 after suffering a stroke, Solomiyka, a symbol of transplantation in Ukraine, who became the youngest child to receive a heart transplant from a 4-year-old boy, Yura, after her little heart became irreversibly sick due to a respiratory viral infection. More than 30 patients and their relatives came from different parts of the country to show how transplantation saves lives, and to thank the doctors and donor families for the chance to live.

The initiative was supported by representatives of the Government of Ukraine – Mykhailo Radutskyi, Chairman of the Committee of the Parliament of Ukraine on National Health, Medical Aid and Medical Insurance, and Oksana Dmytrieva, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on National Health, Medical Aid and Medical Insurance and Chairman of the Subcommittee on modern medical technologies and development
of transplantology, Dmytro Koval, General Director of the Ukrainian Center for Transplant Coordination, Vasyl Strilka, Director of the Department of High-tech Medical Care and Innovations. The representatives of key transplant centers – Heart Institute, First Territorial Medical Association of Lviv, Shalimov Institute, Amosov Institute – shared their experience in the transplantation of heart, kidney, and liver in adults and children.

The organizer of the conference was the Heart Institute whose team performs the largest number of successful heart transplants in Ukraine. From 2019 to 2024, doctors of the Institutne performed more than 100 heart transplants.
The main partner of the conference was the pharmaceutical company “Farmak”.

“The Heart Beats” is an initiative created by combining the efforts of the Heart Institute, the “Heart on the Hand” Charity, and the NGO “Born Again” to popularize transplantation and donation in Ukraine. More than three thousand people in Ukraine receive a diagnosis every year that is incompatible with a full and long-term life, and their only hope is transplantation.

We are fruitfully working on the culture of donation in Ukraine to change society’s attitude towards donation. After all, transplantation is a chance to save thousands of people who are waiting for vital organs – heart, kidney, liver.

Thank you to everyone who makes transplantation in Ukraine a reality.

Video from the Conference can be watched here: