Canadian and American prosthetic care specialists will share their experience with Ukrainian colleagues as part of the Ukraine Prosthetic Assistance Project to provide high-quality prosthetic care and rehabilitation in Ukraine.

"Many of those who need prosthetic care would like to do this abroad, but this costs a lot. We started looking for ways how we can develop prosthetic care in Ukraine. The main goal of the project is the transfer of experience of U.S. and Canadian specialists to Ukrainian colleagues and the provision of prosthetic care to candidates-participants of the project," Project Manager and representative of Euromaidan Canada at the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in Toronto Antonina Kumka said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

She said that Ukrainian prosthetic care specialists from Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky and Lviv will be trained by professionals from the United States and Canada who are doing this on the voluntary basis. They took unpaid leave and arrived in Ukraine to support the country.

Kumka said that at present, the project costs around CAD 55,000. Its real cost is around CAD 200,000, which was reduced thanks to assistance from various organizations. The Canada Ukraine Foundation, Rehabilitation International and the Ukrainian Diaspora in Canada provide financial support, the Social Policy Ministry of Ukraine provides administrative support, and the Orthotech-Service provides technical support.

Chairman of the United States Member Society of the International Society of Prosthetics and Orthotics, founder of ProsthetiKa Jon Batzdorff said it is necessary to create the conditions to establish prosthetic care in Ukraine as receiving this treatment abroad does not always achieve the desired results.

"All prosthetics need technical support, they must be set correctly, functionally and properly maintained. A person can get very good prosthesis abroad but a week or month later after his return, this person will return to the initial situation as there is nobody to [maintain] the prosthetic," he said.

Batzdorff said that the most important thing in prosthetic care is contact with the limb of patient, saying that "if the prosthetic is [not] of any comfort to a person, he won't get his previous lifestyle back," Batzdorff said.

In turn, First Deputy Social Minister of Ukraine Vasyl Shevchenko drew attention to the importance of training Ukrainians who can perform prosthetic care services in Ukraine.

"We [will] shift this direction towards training. As you know there is not even such a course as prosthetics, universities have not extended [these courses], only orientation courses," he said.

Shevchenko said that prosthetic factories in Ukraine are a legacy of the Soviet Union, which were involved in prosthetic care but not in rehabilitation.

"Now we [have] initiated discussion on attracting investors to these prosthetic factories on the condition of public private ownership, creating joint enterprises," he added.