U.S. announces $61,000 in medical aid to hospitals treating Zasiadko mine victims (09/09/01)

U.S. announces $61,000 in medical aid to hospitals treating Zasiadko mine victims

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The United States government announced on August 30 that it has supplied $61,000 worth of medical equipment to four hospitals in Donetsk treating survivors of the Zasiadko mine explosion.

The mine blast, which came from a spontaneous ignition of methane gas that had accumulated in a shaft 1,300 meters below the surface, killed 55 miners, 35 of them instantly. The other 20 succumbed in the weeks since the August 19 disaster, the latest victim on August 30. Thirty-four miners are still hospitalized, eight of them in critical condition.

It was not the first time the U.S. Embassy has come to the help of Ukraine's beleaguered miners, for whom mine explosions and shaft collapses have become a normal work hazard. In 2000 more than 300 Ukrainian miners died due to mine mishaps, while another 180 have succumbed thus far this year.

"We respond to disasters in every way we can for humanitarian reasons," said Peter Sawchyn, press attaché in the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. aid to the Zasiadko mine victims, given in response to a request for emergency assistance from Ukrainian authorities, consists of $36,000 in equipment from the Embassy's Office of Defense Cooperation, including three defibrillators, four laryngoscopes, infusion and suction apparatus, portable ventilators and anesthesia equipment, as well as beds and mattresses. It arrived in Donetsk on a U.S. military craft from Germany two days after the explosion.

The other $25,000 is for additional equipment, which was supplied through the ambassador's emergency assistance fund and procured by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

All the equipment was headed for four hospitals in Donetsk treating the victims: the Donetsk Oblast Territorial Medical Facility, the Institute of Urgent and Reconstructive Surgery, the Oblast Trauma Center and the Oblast Hospital of Professional Diseases

In the spring of 2000, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv had responded to a Ukrainian mining disaster at the Barakova mine in the Luhansk region with a similar relief effort. After a methane explosion there killed 80 miners, the U.S. government delivered $25,000 in aid to the survivors of that tragedy.

At the time, the United States also announced that it had approved $1 million for a special two-year program to improve mine safety in Ukraine, which would go to purchase and deliver special equipment for coal dust abatement and methane gas detection. Six sets of such equipment have already been delivered and installed. An additional 24 sets are expected in the coming months.

In the past, the United States, through its Embassy in Kyiv, also has donated $75,000 in material aid to flood victims in Ukraine's Transcarpathian region.

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