8-year-old Yakov and 14-year-old Volodymyr were sent from Lviv to Vienna for rehabilitation today, August 18. On July 1, a Russian rocket hit their apartment in Odesa. The boys’ mother and stepfather died on the spot, the children were seriously injured.
This was reported in the First Medical Association of Lviv.
On July 1, a Russian rocket hit the boys’ house in Serhiivka. Neighbors pulled the brothers out from under the rubble.
“Unfortunately, it so happened that most of the people who lived in the boys’ entrance died. The boys were taken to intensive care. Their mother and stepfather died on the spot,” says the boys’ cousin Yevgenia.
8-year-old Yakov was hit in the neck by a fragment from a rocket. 14-year-old Volodymyr received a brain injury, multiple injuries to his face and a fracture of the radius of his right hand. The injured children were first taken to the intensive care unit of a local hospital in Odesa, then transported to Lviv by an evacuation train.
At the time of his arrival in Lviv, Volodymyr’s condition was stable. Yakov’s condition is serious.
“There are ischemic changes in the entire right hemisphere of the brain, and in addition, he had severe diffuse brain damage at the time of hospitalization. He was in a very serious condition during intubation,” says the head of the neurosurgery department Mykhailo Lovga.
After staying in the intensive care and anesthesiology department, Yakov’s condition began to improve. The boy began to move and speak.
“He had deep paralysis. The fact that he can now sit up on his own and is already trying to take his first steps is an incredible achievement,” says physical therapist Serhiy Huda.
Yakiv and Volodymyr went to Austria for rehabilitation together with their cousin.