The Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development, Construction and Municipal Economy of Ukraine Mr. Gennadiy Zubko participated in the signing ceremony which took place during the launch of the new Swiss-Ukrainian joint program.

After the signing of the Memorandum, the Head of the Swiss Cooperation Office Ukraine Mr. Guido Beltrani highlighted: „Within the EGAP Program we plan to use e-governance and e-democracy tools as enablers for building the trust and cooperation between local authorities and citizens. We are confident that modern information and communication technologies are excellent tools for a more efficient provision of administrative services to citizens both from urban and rural areas, and for more transparent and inclusive decision making”.

The EGAP seeks to strengthen good governance and modern public service delivery and social innovation in Ukraine by using the new information communication technologies (ICTs).

The selected partner regions are the Oblasts of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Vinnytsia and Volyn.

The city of Dnepropetrovsk has to accommodate a big number of refugees, among them many people with chronic diseases, for example chronic kidney failure. Such patients depend on a regular treatment with a hemodialysis machine. This is an artificial kidney removing all the toxic substances normally washed out from the blood by the kidneys and transported to the urine. If the kidneys no longer work normally, this task has to be done by an artificial pumping and filtrating system. For this hemodialysis treatment, the patient has to come to the hemodialysis department of a hospital three times a week for four hours.

Dnepropetrovsk municipal hospital Nr.4 is a big hospital with a well-equipped large hemodialysis station. However, this station is calculated for the normal number of patients in the city and its environments, not for the huge additional workload resulting from the big number of refugees with chronic kidney diseases urgently needing treatment with hemodialysis. After a careful evaluation of the situation together with the specialists of Hospital Nr.4, the Humanitarian Aid Section of the Government of Switzerland decided to donate five Hemodialysis Machines and the necessary material to run the equipment to the Hospital. With these machines, at least 30 patients can be treated and thus be prevented from dying of renal failure. Most of those patients so far could only be dialyzed once or twice per week (instead of three times), which leads to a fast decay of general health.

On June 22, 2015 the five Hemodialysis Machines were handed over by representatives of the Swiss Government to the authorities of Dnepropetrovsk Hospital Nr.4.

The total amount of the current Swiss humanitarian assistance in Dnipropetrovsk hospital No 4 is CHF 200 thousand (or more than 4,5 million Ukrainian hryvnia).