September 25, 2004
UUARC heals unfortunate Ukrainian children
in summer camps
The Black Sea is
a source of health for all Ukrainians,
especially children. The United Ukrainian
American Relief Committee’s (UUARC) project
for healing orphans had (as it did previously)
an educational goal along with its healing
program – to form a Ukrainian national
awareness in the children.
Sixty children
from the Luhansk and Vinnytsya regions of
Ukraine, all orphans from poor families with
many children, received a hospitable welcome at
the healing camps – health resort type
complexes in the city of Ochakiv.
The Ochakiv
estuary (Dnipro-Southern Buh-Black Sea)
possesses unique medicative characteristics. The
air is saturated steam of iodine and bromine,
produced in large quantities by water-plants
located in the water of the estuary.
Nowhere along the
Black Sea coast is there such a natural
inhalation of iodine and bromine and such a
natural iodide-bromide vapor bath as in Ochakiv.
Since the
unfortunate children as a rule have a weakened
immunity and live in ecologically inauspicious
conditions, their health is undermined.
Iodine has a
beneficial effect on the thyroid gland and
iodide inhalations exhibit an anti-inflammatory
effect during diseases of the upper respiratory
pathways and lungs. Bromine normalizes the
function of the nervous system, improves and
renews the function of the liver cell and
removes radio-nuclides from the organism. That
is why the camps were chosen in this area at the
meetings managed by the UUARC.
The children were
examined by a doctor and each was assigned
appropriate treatment – massage, phytotherapy,
inhalations, therapeutic gymnastics, and
physiotherapy. The best doctors were the sun,
the sea and the fresh air.
Living quarters
were in comfortable rooms with all conveniences.
Meals were four
times daily. The menu was varied. Fruits,
vegetables and juices were served each day. The
sickest children received vitamin and medicinal
cocktails.
While traveling
by train to Odesa, then by bus from Odesa to
Ochakiv, it was impossible not to enjoy the
southern shoreline land that used to be
inhabited by Scythians and Sarmatians, Goths,
Polovtsians and Pechenigs. The Tartars-Mongols,
Lithuanians and Turks did not avoid this land.
The ancient Greeks lived, rejoiced and wept here
for a full millennium.
Happiness and
satisfaction resulted from various excursions:
to the city of Mykolayiv, the cradle and pride
of Ukrainian shipbuilding; to the city of Odesa,
one of the strangest cities in the world; to the
archeological preserve Olviya, the largest
center of ancient Greek civilization on the
lands of the northern Black Sea coast; to the
Kinbursk spit, Ukraine’s natural reservation;
and to the city of Ochakiv.
The cheered up
children returned home tanned, healthy and
buoyant. They shall long remember their trip to
the sea and throughout their whole life the
Ukrainian orphans will recall the wonderful
vacation on the Black Sea shoreline. Without
you, dear UUARC contributors, without your
generosity and care, without your understanding
of orphaned life, the paradise in which the
Ukrainian children lived though the beautiful
summer days would have been impossible.
So accept the
sincere gratitude of the children for your good
heart, the magnanimity and beauty of your soul.
May your generosity be returned to you and your
families through God’s great graces.
Vira Prynko
UUARC’s representative in the city of Kyiv,
Ukraine
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