Eighteen-month-old Mykola clutched his mother’s toe as a toddler in the hallway of the National Children’s Hospital in Kyiv, eager to pursue his wish for his still unsteady legs to walk.
Mykola spent her short life in the hospital. He was diagnosed with cancer Born, a month before Russian troops invaded Ukraine.
“It’s like you have two wars to fight,” said his mother, Anna Kolesnikova. “Two wars in your life: one is to save your child’s life, and the other is to fight for your country.”
Across Ukraine, families of children with cancer face the dual agonies of a terminal illness and a country torn by war. For many, the Russian invasion meant displacement from their homes, fear of airstrikes and separation from loved ones, including family members serving in the military.
But despite the new difficulties, the conflict has contributed to the development of Ukrainian pediatric oncology, experts say, thanks to greater cooperation with international partners at this moment of crisis.
Still, for families like the Kolesnikovs, the war only added to their pain.
Mykola was born in Kherson in January 2022 with a malignant tumor that disfigured his face and neck and left him with only one functioning eye. He was immediately sent to Ohmatdit Children’s Hospital in Kyiv for chemotherapy and surgery.
He and his mother took refuge in the hospital basement for weeks so that Mykola could continue treatment when Kyiv was attacked.
His hometown in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine was soon captured by Russian forces and remains under occupation. Ms. Kolesnikova, 32, is staying in Kyiv with Mykola, her husband, her eldest son and her parents will stay on the other side of the front line, which seems to be on the other side of the world.
“I was separated from my family,” he said. “And I am constantly worried for the life of my child and the life of my parents and my other son.”
She feared the worst when the Nova Kakhovka dam collapsed last month, flooding part of the Kherson region, but her family was unscathed.
At the start of the war, many children suffering from cancer were hastily moved to other European countries or to remote areas. The evacuations, coordinated with SAFER Ukraine in partnership with St. Jude Global, ensured that their treatment continued uninterrupted.
“We are very focused on saving this large, vulnerable group of children,” said Dr. said Roman Kizima, pediatric oncologist and acting director of the West Ukrainian Special Children’s Medical Center.
Since then, Ukraine’s approach to pediatric cancer care has changed, says Dr. Kijima, 39, said. Starting last summer, the focus has been on capacity-building within the country. Although some children with complex needs are still sent abroad, most now remain in Ukraine.
With new coordination with international partners, growing connections with European hospitals, new training opportunities and more specialists providing assistance in the country, Dr.
“I think the level is rising, and maybe it’s even higher,” he said, pointing to more specialized treatments at regional hospitals since the war began, as a result of the war.
Many childhood cancers are treatable, but the prognosis depends on where the child receives care. In rich countries, with greater access to treatments and drugs, more than 80 percent of children with cancer survive at least five years. In poor and middle-income countries, rates can be as low as 30 percent, according to the World Health Organization.
Yulia Nogovitsyna, director of the Tabletchki program at a leading Ukrainian pediatric cancer charity, estimates that about 60 percent of children in the country are successfully treated.
“There is still a gap between Ukraine and high-income countries, and you want to reduce this gap,” he said.
Tabletchki, funded by international donors including Choose Love, provides assistance such as housing, medication and psychological support to cancer patients and their families, as well as palliative care support and purchases equipment and medicine and training for health workers.
Even in the midst of the war, there are some signs of hope, Ms. Nogovitsina said with an increase in practitioners being trained abroad.
“Education and training can change more than just upgrades and drugs,” he said.
But there are also new challenges. The charity has long relied on crowdfunding donations, but has struggled to raise money in Ukraine during the war and is seeing high levels of poverty among the families it supports.
And it can no longer reach children in Russia’s occupied territories.
“It’s the worst thing, because some kids are in palliative care, so they’re dying,” he said, and need morphine or other critical pain relievers. “There, we can’t do this. So, children are dying in pain and it’s very tragic.
For some children, war delays diagnosis and treatment.
When the Russian invasion began in February 2022 and the hospital was evacuated, 12-year-old Sasha Batanov was bedridden with severe back pain in a hospital in Kharkiv. He was taken home, and sheltered there for weeks.
“I was trying to calm him down,” said his mother, Natalia Batanova. “Though I realized something was going on.”
They didn’t know it yet, but Sasha had leukemia. The mother said that if she could have stayed in the hospital, she would have been caught sooner.
It would be July before the cancer was diagnosed and he was transferred to Kyiv for chemotherapy. Sasha needed a bone marrow transplant, which she received this April.
For now, Sasha, his mother and his brother live in an apartment in Kiev as they continue treatment. His father is a soldier, fighting in the east of the country, adding to his fears. But Ms. Batanova is hopeful.
“We are happy that we have this life today, this moment,” he said. “This is what war and this life have taught us.”
For children with cancer and their families, it can be difficult to find a shred of normalcy as personal and national crises converge.
Victoria and Serhii Yamborko hoped a summer camp in western Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains earlier this month would give them time to create some happy memories with their 5-year-old daughter, Varvara, who was diagnosed with cancer last year.
He traveled there with Tabletchki, which runs camps for children and their families to swim, hike and relax.
With nervous excitement, Varvara, wearing a small riding cap, helped the horse ride along the trail, the pine forests stretched out in the valley below. Mr Yamborko, 50, took a video on his phone of Mrs Yamborko, 38, holding her daughter’s arm.
“These rehabilitative moments, though they are few, they help you move forward,” said Mr. Yamborko, who said he relied on his deep traditional faith to sustain them.
The family is originally from Kherson, but was in Kyiv at the start of the war and fled to the relative safety of western Ukraine for a few months. Then he noticed changes in Varvara, who broke three bones in a short period of time and became very sick.
Last summer, when he returned to Kyiv, he received the dreaded diagnosis.
“It felt like the end of the world,” said Ms. Yamborko, explaining her difficulty coping with the news, but fear for the family still living in Kherson. “I thought that was it.”
Varvara endured months of intensive chemotherapy and other treatments and was released from the hospital this summer. She continues to receive outpatient care, but her energy and enthusiasm have returned, her parents said.
Covering her short hair with a lilac baseball cap and starting to grow back, Varvara enthused that her favorite part of camp is spending time with the other kids.
“It’s great to be around other parents, you don’t have to explain everything,” Ms. Yamborko said. “Here, we understand each other without words.”
Even for children in remission, like Anna Viunikova, the war has complicated ongoing care. Anna, 10, received a bone-marrow transplant and chemotherapy for leukemia before the war, and her dark auburn hair has grown back.
But the war shattered her family’s efforts to resume a normal life. The Russians occupied his village in the Kherson region. Her mother feared for her safety and Anna’s ability to get regular checkups, so last summer, Anna and her parents fled to Kyiv.
“I want everything to be fine,” said Anna. “So I sat down to eat watermelon. Being able to walk and ride a bike like before. But it won’t be the same.”
Oleksandr Chubko And Daria Mityuk Contribution report.
