BALTIMORE — An employee at GBMC, who is from Ukraine, is working with the hospital to help her home country.
Yana Karp came to the United States from Kiev, Ukraine in 1989. After going to school, she got a job at GBMC at a sonographer.
When the war in Ukraine began, Karp said her cousin and her two children escaped and eventually made their way to Maryland. Her cousin's husband remained in the country, in a small town in Western Ukraine called Uzhhorod.
Karp said the town, which sits on the border of Slovakia, has become a refugee city for tens of thousands of Ukrainians, many of them women and children.
She felt compelled to help and asked her cousin's husband if she and a doctor from GBMC could come over to offer their medical assistance to the Uzhhorod City Polyclinic.
HOW TO HELP UKRAINE: Click here for a list of reputable charities supporting Ukraine
"He came back and said no we don’t need doctors, we don’t need ultra sound [techs], we need medicine. The Uzhhorod clinic serves people with cancer, they provide chemotherapy. They help people with kidney disease and diabetes and they have a severe shortage of the medicine."
"The supplies are not coming because they usually come from the bigger cities. Uzhhorod is a small town and they have 60,000 refugees, mainly women and children, and they need medicine as well. It was a humanitarian disaster."
Karp, with the help of GBMC, is collecting monetary donations to purchase the medicine and send it to Uzhhorod City Polyclinic. To make a donation, click here.
