Shipping aid directly to Poland for Ukraine refugees

General Discussion
#1

(Colo. Springs, CO March 2): After some time asking around, I finally have what seems to be credible place in Poland, where folks can mail Ukraine refugee supplies directly. That has let me begin canvassing local clinics for surplus meds. But I’m still checking to make sure this company is legit, etc. This is a record of communication between me and “Ivanna Dzygovska” from “FARMAK JSC” aka www.farmak.ua, published with her blessing. Is anyone else able to verify or refute that this is a credible/real person/organization where we really can send things?

(March 1)

Pani Dzygovska: Przepraszam, nie mówię zbyt dobrze po polsku i piszę do ciebie z Kolorado. Valentyna Akssy suggested I contact you (her message is below). I don’t have spare money but I do have some time to collect surplus items and send them to your refugees. If you can tell me what you need, that will help. For now my plan for now is to visit medical clinics and try to pick up extra medicines, then mail them directly to the address you give me. During the Bosnian war this worked well, because we were allowed to collect medicines a few weeks before they expire. Then they could still be used for a few months. This was allowed under the wartime rules. It kept the medicines from being thrown away, and they were worth a lot per pound. Probably this can be repeated. Am I on the right track here? What instructions or requests do you have for me?

Dave Ridley
NHexit.com

Dear Dave,

I am Ukrainian and from Polish I have only a surname)

I was born, raised, live in Kyiv. And in this difficult hour for my Motherland, I am here too.

I have worked with Valentyna before and last year we have worked on several projects together as we both work in the pharmaceutical business. I’m the head of the licensing department in the biggest manufacturing company in UA. It is Farmak.

Farmak has production facility in Kiev, but now we stopped, because of bombings. Also Farmak has 7 representative offices outside of UA. One of them is located in Poland. Company Nordfarm. A headquarters for receiving humanitarian aid was organized in Lodz. We have about 50 employees in Poland, who know English, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian languages.

http://www.nordfarm.pl/en

Recently we received a list of necessary medicines from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine. Right now we all are mostly needing medication, because Russian fascists bomb hospitals and residential areas, so many wounded.

Many companies that have medicines are not ready to provide them for free, Farmak has to pay for them. For these cases we have a solution. Farmak’s owner (Filya Zebrivska) has Zebrivsky charitable fund, which was established in 2011. This Fund predominantly helps doctors, but since 2014 we also support the army (war in Donetsk and Lugansk started in 2014).

In the attachment you could find:

  1.   The official letter from Ministry of Health (MoH) to UA pharmaceutical companies

  2.   The list of demands for hospitals (provided by MoH)

  3.   Payment details of Zebrivsky charitable fund both in EURO and USD.

All medicines you collect must be sent to Łódź. Any expiration date is acceptable.

Could you let me know exactly what and when you could send us?

I could provide you with the contact persons who will take the medicines from you to our warehouse/headquarters and then send them to Ukraine. We provide logistics ourselves.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. Now I am working 24/7. My What’s up: (number redacted by Ridley)

Glory to Ukraine! Слава Україні!

Best regards,

Ivanna Dzygovska
Head of In-Licensing
Business Development Department
FARMAK JSC
www.farmak.ua

(March 2)

Your email is exactly what I needed, in order to begin collecting medicines from clinics. However I am just now starting, and I will probably research your institution (I will try to determine that you are real and legitimate) before sending. I think you are / I think that it is so. I’ll be in touch when I have something or know more. I am a co host on FreeTalkLive.com with an audience of 200,000 people so it should be possible to spread and publicize this process. If you have a wider or longer list of items I/we should try to collect, including non medical items, that would be helpful. (We may need a longer list of options, of things you need).

Can I send a copy of your message, to the clinics that I contact? This will improve their response. Is it ok for me to post your e-mail publicly? (Can I broadcast your message)? Please be fair to our Russian brothers when you defeat their government’s army.

Dear Dave,

Thank you for your mail and desire to support the people of Ukraine. Our nation may just be destroyed now if we are not strong and surrender.

Regarding our legitimacy:

  1. Joint Stock Company Farmak is the biggest pharmaceutical company in Ukraine with 2 facilities:
    a) in Kiev (since 1925, earlie it was called Lomonosov Kyiv Chemical and Pharmaceutical Plant) – for production of finished drugs formulation (FDF). Now it was stopped, because of Russian attacks.
    b) in Shostka (was built in 2015) – for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) production. It also doesn’t work since the 24th of Feb
    JSC Farmak is private company, owned by Zebrivska Filya Ivanivna. She is Head of the Supervisory Board at Farmak.
    About Farmak:
    https://farmak.ua/en/about/

  2. Zhebrivski Family Charitable Foundation
    It is our Fund for supporting medical needs in Ukraine. It was established in 2011. Owned by Zebrivska Filya Ivanivna
    Activity of the Fund: https://farmak.ua/en/steels_4/charity-en/
    We could provide all necessary documents
    In open sources you could also check: ВБО "БЛАГОДІЙНИЙ ФОНД РОДИНИ ЖЕБРІВСЬКИХ" — 37725772 — Опендатабот

  3. In Poland we have our representative office (since 2017) – company NordFarm, where more than 50 of our employees work there. In Poland we have opened headquarter for gathering humanitarian medical aid
    Home - Nordfarm

Pharmaceutical HUB: (address redacted by Ridley)

But we have several hubs for different aims (some products needs special temperature conditions etc)

  1. in Poland we work together with Governmental Agency for Strategic Reserves https://www.rars.gov.pl/

Regarding urgent demands of UA hospitals:

  1. We are absolutely lack of HEMOSTATICs, such as Quick clot, Celox, NuStat, Chito-Sam, ChitoGauze Pro
  2. Dressings materials: tourniquets, bandages, dressings
  3. We need insulines (cold chain must be = 2-8C) for people suffered from diabetes melitus: RHI (recombinant human insulin), glargine, aspart, lispro etc
  4. Parenteral nutrition for people in intensive care (coma)
  5. First aid kits for the military – list of components is attached

I would be very grateful if you share this information. We really need support right now, people are dying every minute. The more and faster the people support us, the higher the chances of stopping Putin and restoring peace!

Thank you for your support
Glory to Ukraine! Слава Україні!
Best regards,
Ivanna Dzygovska

ack I didn’t mean to take up so much of her time, but I think what’s happening here is similar to Catalonia 1936 where everything is getting repurposed and triaged in the chaos… so apparently this unrelated business is getting used as a hub for supplies and distribution , and being unrelated…people actually have enough time to answer emails. I’ve just emailed about 10 clinics so far in Colorado Springs where I’m visiting, asking for any meds that are about to expire or be discarded…suggested next steps? Anyone else want to participate in this?

1 Like
#2

They sent me this other list of needs for now, but I have a requested a wider list of options including non-medical. More likely it’s just a question of what you are throwing away, I don’t want to send anything that is likely to be of use locally.

№ Name

1 Individual sterile dressing package with elastic first aid compression component with protective moisture-resistant shell

2 Chemical means for a stop of bleeding (bandage hemostatic tamponing with hemostatic means)

3 Gel-based occlusive thoracic bandage (sticker) (with or without valve)

4 Thermo blanket

5 Mechanical means for a stop of bleeding like “CAT”

6 Nasopharyngeal airway (airway, tube)

7 Scissors for cutting clothes and shoes (atraumatic)

8 Film (valve) for artificial lung ventilation

9 Puncture needle for decompression of the pleural cavity

10 Hard neck collar with size adjustment

Thanks!

1 Like
#3

Excellent, Dave! The info Ivanna Dzygovska provided sounds legit on the face of it, but caution is certainly in order; crises like this one often generate scams. What is your plan to send supplies? Did you redact her address simply pending further verification that this is a legitimate effort?

I just sent a message to a group called the 510 party, described online as a libertarian political party in Ukraine (5.10 - Wikipedia), but it bounced. I also visited the Sons of Liberty International website (https://www.sonsoflibertyinternational.com/) – they are an NGO that provides military assistance to freedom fighters. However their site has nothing about Ukraine at this point.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

#4

The main problem right now is finding surplus prescription meds (or other meds) which can be sent. Once we have stuff to send then I guess I would send it to the most credible/efficient Poland address I have at that time. The important thing is, we have enough of a credible address to start the collection process. At the demonstration yesterday one lady suggested contacting local police departments in my area, who receive surplus presciption drug dropoffs. Another had a pharmaceutical contact… it’s all going too slow but at least there is progress.

I emailed 20 local clinics and got no where, another (charity) clinic contacted by phone said they just had a huge truckload of goods dropped off…and almost all of it immediately got sent off toward Ukraine area or local needs.

Anyway do you think you would be in a position to find surplus meds that are about to expire ,etc? that seems to be where the most good can be done since it would be near useless here and lifesaving there.

#5

Is anything going on with this, Dave? I apologize for not being more in touch and following up with you about it, but am still interested in helping gather medical supplies for Ukraine if you’ve found what you believe is a useful conduit for delivering such aid. I know that Putin’s brutal and tragic war of aggression there continues, and that help remains needed.

#6

i got nowhere with this, not even a response from the many clinics I contacted. and kinda got thrown under the bus by some of the Ukrainians in the defend Ukraine movement…not just on the Net but in person. Not all, some are very nice. The demonstrations were successful and folks in ukraine appreciated the vids i sent them from the demonstrations. But I was considered controversial for trying to focus on Russian dissidents and bringing them into the process. It started getting ugly enough that I figured I was misusing my time. I did send some money through an aid organization since the direct aid fell thru.

The Russian government is the main bad guy on this issue, but ultimately this no-good-deed-goes-unpunished treatment was enough to take the wind out of my sails on this and remind me that New Hampshire is supposed to be the focus or maybe places where no one cares what’s happening and the aid goes further.

Everyone else in the western world is focused on Ukraine; everything and the bathroom sink is on its way there while Rwanda probably barely has enough Vitamin A to prevent blindness. The Ron Paul idea of non intervention… maybe that has applications for the volunteer and the individual…maybe more than I had realized.

#7

That’s disappointing to hear. I agree with your impulses in trying to get Russian dissidents involved, make this less of a nationalist thing – nationalism is a major root cause of the whole mess in the first place. Thanks for the update though. You’re probably right that people in various other places like Rwanda need medicine more; the humanitarian crises in those situations are likely not as obviously the result of government aggression however, so as a message against such aggression I still see value in supporting Ukrainians, although I’m not opposed to efforts to help elsewhere by any means. Finding trustworthy local conduits seems like the major problem in most cases.