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A SMALL TINY FOLK-HERO, 5-YEAR OLD NASTIU OVCHAR

News Report By Lubomyr Onyshkevych
Lawrenceville, New Jersey, Sat, March 26, 2005

This is about a small tiny folk-hero, namely about the 5-year old little Nastiu Ovchar, who rescued her 3-year old sister from fire, sustaining in the process 80% burns over her body.

The Ovchars live in the village of Vorontsovka in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine. You can't find that place on a map -- there are 10 houses, no telephone, nor gas, nor roads. Nastia & her sister were alone in the house when it caught fire, from unknown sources. She at first tried to put the fire out, but it was hopeless & she grabbed her sister and fled. In the process she was very badly burned.

Their father jumped on a horse and run to the nearest telephone, 6 km away. The first aid squad came very quickly, took the girl and carried her to Kharkiv. But there was no special facilities there, not even a special bed for burn victims. They gave her a blood transfusion and that is all.

The weather was bad, so they could not fly her to Kyiv, so they took her in a car. In Kyiv there was the right bed here & special doctors. The minister of Medicine of Ukraine brought her oranges, which she had never seen in her life.

But, after 3 operations, it became clear that in Kyiv she can not get the proper skin grafts. They tried to take her to Germany, but German govern- ment wanted 250,000 euros for one week of treatment. A hospital in Boston offered to do it for free.

But now they needed an airplane with proper facilities. President & Katerine Yuschenko used all their influence to find one. Finally, they located a VIP plane that was chartered to fly the president of Rumania; they were able to borrow it.

The plane arrived to the Boryspil airport (from Zurich), Nastia was loaded & they flew to Boston via Lugano, Switzerland, where they were mobbed by reporters -- it seems that the story became big news in Europe, as it was in Ukraine. Finally Nastia arrived in her hospital.

The whole set of arrangements (visas, passports, etc) was accomplished in record time (less than a day!) due to arm-twisting by Katerine Yuschenko. Nastia is accompanied by her mother & 3 Ukrainian doctors.

In these minutes Americans rescue life of Nastya Ovchar Little Ukrainian heroine, who saved the sister from a fire, Nastya Ovchar from Kharkov prepares to operation which will begin in 15:00 (Kiev time) in the Boston burn center.

According to the report of the General consulate of Ukraine in New York, on March, 24 in 21:30 of local time (March, 25, 04:30 of Kiev time), the airplane arrived to Boston (state Massachusetts) with Anastasia Ovchar, suffered from fire, and retinue on board.

The deputy chief of the press-service of MFA of Ukraine Dmitry Svistkov reported that on arrival the child had been directed to the clinic «Shrines» by the special ambulance. According to estimation of specialists, the girl survived the flight to Boston normally.