Oleksandr Zhurov

This is Oleksandr Zhurov. At the age of 54, he lost everything in a jiffy. A needless tragedy that led to the accident has deprived him of both legs above the knees and a part of his skull.

When he became this way, his wife registered him out of the apartment and divorced him. His sister, the only his relative left, refused to take care of him.

We met him two years ago. He did not have any documents at that time. He lived in an underground walking tunnel at Kharkivskyi residential area, from where he was taken to the hospital from time to time when he got too sick.

Like many people having mental problems, Sasha is a very sincere, kind and generous person.

We managed to negotiate with the doctors so that he would not be discharged until we get his documents re-issued.

In six months, we have managed to do it. We got a passport for him, applied for his disability benefits, got welfare payments. And what is most important, we were able to arrange for Sasha to be taken to a private nursing home, where he would be cared for until the end of his life.

All this became possible thanks to the participation of concerned people: for example, a “Bla-bla-car” service female driver who agreed to drive Sasha without being accompanied.

This information does not convey everything that it took to help Sasha: we railed against the doctors who initially refused to keep him in the hospital longer than they wanted, we had the red tape with the documents – the bureaucracy just goes off scale in this country, we experienced a sense of hopelessness when rejected in all the free shelters, because they had were not designated to people with disabilities…

Anyway, now he has a roof over his head, he is clean and always fed. And above all, he is treated like a human being!