On the Ground, Where It Matters Most: A Message From Our CEO

In September 2025, I travelled back to Ukraine (using my own funds) to personally visit the three hospitals the Ukraine Support Fund works with through our flagship Bone Fixator project. These visits took me to Zaporizhia, Dnipro and Kharkiv, where I met directly with medical teams and verified the progress and impact of our projects on the ground.

Meeting people face to face always brings a much deeper understanding of what we are achieving together. It reveals the real impact of our work, the growing needs, and the new challenges hospitals face every single day.

We spoke in detail about logistics, the quantities and quality of the orthopaedic devices we supply, and what could be improved to better support medics working in unimaginably harsh conditions—often with little time, constant pressure, and the very real danger of drones nearby.

I was especially encouraged to receive very positive feedback on the quality of the external bone fixators we supply, which are produced by local Ukrainian orthopaedic device manufacturer HB Ortho 💪🏻. Knowing that these devices are performing well in such demanding circumstances is incredibly important.

For many Ukrainians, Australia feels like a paradise somewhere far, far away. Yet again and again, I was told how deeply moving it is to know that people on the other side of the world genuinely care—people who choose to help those fighting simply for their right to live. That knowledge gives medical teams and patients alike a powerful sense of hope and strength.

There are so many reasons for us all to be proud of what we are achieving together—and it’s just as important that we keep going.

P.S. No seriousness in the photos… a sense of humour is a daily lifesaver 🙂

Warm regards,
Natalia Pastushenko
CEO, Ukraine Support Fund 💙💛