In Santa Barbara, Stories from Ukraine

This story first appeared in Amy Weaver's LinkedIn newsletter, Direct Relief: Hope Ahead.

When I returned to California from Africa a few weeks ago, Direct Relief was hosting a remarkable group of visitors from Ukraine: leaders from the UNBROKEN Ukraine National Rehabilitation Center in Lviv, the Protez Foundation, and the Consulate General of Ukraine in San Francisco, along with several children and young adults who had received prosthetics after losing limbs in the war.

Their stories were profoundly moving. The doctors and staff described the staggering number of wounded civilians and soldiers who now rely on their care, and the young patients beside them showed what that care makes possible. Children - some walking into the room on new prosthetic legs - still adapting but smiling and determined (and making snarky jokes in the way that is universal for teenagers). Parents spoke of how vital it was not only to have access to prosthetics and rehabilitation, but also to counseling and peer support as families adjust to an unthinkable reality.

Direct Relief's support for Ukraine includes funding the fitting of advanced prosthetics, training local specialists, and expanding mental health programs for refugees in partnership with Ukrainian organizations.

Direct Relief has also provided wheelchairs and other mobility aids for injured first responders, delivered specialized transport vehicles to help children with cancer and other conditions reach care, supplied rare cystic fibrosis therapies to patients whose lives depend on them, and donated rheumatoid arthritis medicines that would otherwise be out of reach. This is in addition to ongoing deliveries of requested medications to health providers across the country.

In total, Direct Relief has provided more than 2,900 tons of medical aid, 440 million defined daily doses of medication, $55 million in financial assistance, and $2 billion in material aid for Ukraine since the war began.

But it's not the scale that stays with me. It's the people. The experiences they shared-patients walking again, parents navigating unimaginable trauma, doctors and prosthetists carrying the weight-carried me back to Kampala, Uganda. Different places, different circumstances, but a universal truth: health, invisible in its presence but overwhelming in its absence, is the foundation for everything.

-Amy