Hospital clowns cheer young Ukrainian cancer patients who survived Russian missile attack

Kyiv, Ukraine – Their costumes are donned with surgical precision: floppy hats, foam noses, colorful clothing and a ukulele with colorful nylon strings.

Moments later, laughter and silly singing emanate from a beige hospital ward where the beeping of medical equipment is usually heard.

As Ukraine’s medical facilities come under strain from increasing attacks in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion, volunteer hospital clowns are hitting the road to give hospitalized children some much-needed moments of joy.

The Bureau of Smiles and Support (BUP) is a hospital clown initiative founded in 2023 by Olha Bulkina, 35, and Maryna Berdar, 39, who have more than five years of experience as hospital clowns. “Our mission is to continue childhood regardless of circumstances,” Bulkina told The Associated Press.

BUP took on new significance after a Russian missile attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv in July. The attack on Ukraine’s largest pediatric facility forced the evacuation of dozens of young patients, including cancer patients, to other hospitals in the capital – and the clowns did not stand idle.

Together with first responders, Berdar and Bulkina helped clear the rubble after the attack and cared for the children, who were transferred to other medical facilities. But for them too, young patients were the real heroes.

“When the children were evacuated from Okhmatdyt after the rocket attack, many of them were in extremely difficult health conditions, but even in this situation they tried to support the adults,” Berdar recalled the events after the attack.

The hospital clowns, who wear traditional clown noses and bright costumes, are now visiting several hospitals in the Ukrainian capital region, including the National Cancer Institute, where the number of patients has risen sharply after the Okhmatdyt attack.

Tetiana Nosova, 22, and Vladyslava Kulinich, 22, are volunteer hospital clowns who call themselves Zhuzha and Lala and joined the BUP more than a year ago. For her, working as a hospital clown is as challenging as it is rewarding.

“I volunteer to help children not think about their illness even for a brief moment, so that laughter replaces tears and joy replaces fear, especially during medical procedures,” said Kulinich. In her practice, she stays with the children and shares all their feelings, be it fear, pain or joy.

For Nosova, it was the process itself that got her into clowning. “I am motivated by joy. I just enjoy it. All my life I studied to be an actress, all my life I enjoyed making people laugh. “That’s motivation enough for me,” she said.

In a city struggling with nightly air raid warnings and power outages, overwhelmed doctors say the volunteers’ presence is a much-needed distraction and often helps children who have undergone painful medical procedures feel happy again.

“Clowns play a very important role in the treatment of children. They help distract the children, they help them forget about the pain, they help them not to pay attention to the nurses or doctors who come to treat them,” Valentyna Mariash, a senior nurse at the Okhmatdyt cancer ward, told AP.

The attack in July complicated treatment plans for many families. Daria Vertetska, 34, was in Okhmatdyt with her seven-year-old daughter Kira when the rocket exploded right in front of their station. Kira, diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma of the nasopharynx, was asleep and treated with morphine.

“It saved her that she was covered with a blanket during the attack, but still her head, legs and arms were cut by small shards of glass,” Vertetska said. She and Kira returned to Okhmatdyt less than a week after the attack.

Not all children returned to the hospital. Some remained in the medical facilities to which they had been evacuated, while others were moved to charity-funded apartments near the hospital.

Despite hospital clown initiatives like BUP across Ukraine, the need for their work is growing exponentially. “When I see how much our work is needed in the large children’s hospitals in Kiev, I can only imagine how great the need is in the regional and district hospitals, where such (clown) activities, such as in Okhmatdyt, “To be honest, it just doesn’t exist,” Berdar said.

The World Health Organization warned earlier this month that the country was facing a worsening health crisis, largely due to devastating missile and drone attacks on the country’s power grid and hospital infrastructure.

Since Russia’s large-scale invasion began in February 2022, the WHO has recorded nearly 2,000 attacks on Ukraine’s health facilities and says they have had a serious impact.

Children are among the most vulnerable people, but the entire country is facing a mental health crisis. This means that the clowns’ work has received widespread support from medical professionals.

Parents are simply happy when a smile appears on their children’s faces again.

“With clowns, children learn to make jokes, they play with soap bubbles, and their mood is lifted. Today Kira saw clowns playing the ukulele, now she wants one too,” said her mother Daria.

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Associated Press writer Derek Gatopoulos contributed to this report.

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