By KYIV. Oct 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – At the initiative of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS), solar panels were installed at Vyshneve city hospital (Kyiv region) for an uninterrupted supply of electricity, Director General of the URCS National Committee Maksym Dotsenko said.
“Vyshneve city hospital serves over 120,000 people, and therefore it is important to resolve the issue of providing all services uninterrupted in the conditions of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine, with destroyed infrastructure and possible blackouts. It is necessary to ensure that the cycle of providing care to residents is not interrupted communities. For this purpose, 182 photovoltaic cells have been installed in Vyshneve city hospital, which provide it with electricity during daylight hours. The total power is about 100 kW, this will be enough for the hospital to function effectively. In addition, rechargeable batteries have been installed, which are charged from the same panels and provide electricity for three to seven hours at night,” Dotsenko explained at a briefing in Vyshneve on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian Red Cross Society founded this project in the spring of 2023 in cooperation with central and local authorities, charitable organizations, as well as with the financial support of partners from the Estonian Red Cross.
“I consider this project one of the best examples of effective cooperation between city and central authorities, charitable organizations, including the Ukrainian Red Cross Society. No less important for us was the help of representatives of the Estonian Red Cross, who collected funds for the project – about UAH 4.5 million,” said the director general said.
According to him, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society pays significant attention to issues of independence and energy efficiency. Dotsenko said last winter the society managed to provide many health and educational facilities with generators and other energy storage systems.
“However, we have made a strategic decision that the medical sector will become one of our main priorities for the restoration of critical infrastructure. We have already restored six hospitals in Kyiv region,” he said.
At the same time, one of the areas supervised by Advisor to the Health Minister of Ukraine Vitaliy Vlasiuk is also the installation of solar power plants at health facilities. He said last winter confirmed the assumption that the best solution and the most important priority should be the optimization of health facilities.
“The state, on the one hand, has its own approaches to solving this problem: we cooperate with the World Bank, with the Japanese agency Jica, with Ursula von der Leyen’s Ray of Hope project, and within these projects, I hope we will begin to recruit health facilities with solar stations with batteries. At the same time, another direction is working with philanthropists. The installation of solar panels in Vyshneve city hospital is an initiative and project of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society,” Vlasiuk said.
