As part of her trip to Lviv region, First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska together with First Lady of the Republic of Latvia Andra Levite visited the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and the Lviv Regional Perinatal Center.
"My colleague Andra Levite, the First Lady of Latvia, is visiting Ukraine for the second time in the last year: in the summer, during the Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, she specially came to Bucha, which suffered from the invaders. And today, we with Volodymyr and the presidential couple of the Republic of Latvia are in Lviv, a city that has become a home for thousands of Ukrainians who were forced to leave their homes due to hostilities," Zelenska said.
She recalled that Latvia sheltered 45,000 Ukrainians, accepted more than 100 Ukrainian soldiers for treatment, and gave shelter to more than 500 people with disabilities, including 141 children of the Bakhmut psychoneurological boarding school. In addition, Levite took Ukrainian young mothers and newborns who are born in her country under her patronage.
At the Ukrainian Catholic University, the rector, Fr. Bohdan Prakh, and the vice-rector, Natalia Klymovska, told the wives of the presidents of Ukraine and Latvia about their experience in creating a barrier-free environment: UCU is the only fully barrier-free higher education institution in Ukraine. The unique Emaus center of support for persons with mental disorders operates here.
"The war daily creates many new obstacles and barriers on the path of Ukrainians. Therefore, every attempt to destroy them, make the inaccessible accessible, the complex simple, and the difficult easy is an act. Comfortable space, convenient services, availability of education or work – all this is a contribution to the joint victory over the unfriendly, hostile, that which limits life and interferes with it," Zelenska said.
The First Ladies of Ukraine and Latvia also visited the Lviv Regional Perinatal Center, which in 2022 became a leader in Ukraine in providing medical care during childbirth. More than a thousand women who moved from other regions because of the war received qualified help here. Zelenska and Levite got acquainted with the center's development in wartime conditions.
At the end of last year, a bank of donor breast milk for prematurely born and full-term sick children began operating here. At the beginning of 2023, for the first time in the history of municipal perinatal centers, the institution opened a department of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) for treating infertility.
"Despite war and trials, children should be born in safety and the best conditions. Because it is how our future is born," the First Lady of Ukraine said.
In addition, the presidential spouses of Ukraine and Latvia honored the memory of Ukrainian defenders who died in the Russian-Ukrainian war. They laid flowers on the graves of soldiers in the Field of Honor at Lychakiv Cemetery.
