You can save the life of a Ukrainian soldier, no matter where you are.
Equipping and Saving the Defenders of Democracy
"Friends, you’ve saved the life of our soldier again." This is the kind of message we, a Canadian non-profit organization, receive from Ukrainian defenders fighting off russians invaders.
How is it that we, thousands of kilometers away from the front line, are able to save the lives of injured Ukrainian soldiers?
The answer to this question is both complicated and simple. When a soldier sustains a severe injury, there is a limited window to get them to a military hospital. This time is referred to as the "golden hour" because, if a high-quality tourniquet is applied to stop the bleeding, it significantly increases the chances of survival and it can sometimes save an injured limb as well. A tourniquet is used to wrap tightly around a limb to prevent the critically injured person from bleeding to death while they are transported to a hospital.
To save lives and increase survivability of Ukrainian soldiers, since 2022 Mriya Aid has provided over 6,000 US-manufactured CAT Gen 7 Tourniquets to multiple Ukrainian military units and medics.
Generation 7 Combat Application Tourniquets (CAT) are the gold standard across the world, the official tourniquet of the US Army, and regularly procured by other NATO defence forces, including the Canadian Armed Forces. According to the US Army’s Institute of Surgical Research, CAT 7s are the only tourniquets in the world to be proven 100% effective in occluding blood flow in both upper and lower extremities.
The CAT 7 one-handed design enables it to be self-applied by the injured individual, and it has visual clues to help guide the user when they are in shock or in distress. Adopted by military and emergency services around the world, the CAT Gen 7 is most requested by Ukrainians on the front lines.
Without reliable, high quality tourniquets, the injured die needlessly. Cheap, poorly made or self-made make-shift tourniquets result in nerve and soft tissue damage, and expedite death, rather than buy time and prevent death and further injury. Too often, poorly quality tourniquets break apart during application or simply can’t be tightened to do the job they’re designed to do, causing the patient to bleed to death while being stabilized and transported to an operating room.
In Ukraine, the Mriya Aid team was shown a collection of poor quality or self-made tourniquets that are, unfortunately, found in abundance in Ukraine.
This week 1700 CAT 7s purchased and shipped by Mriya Aid arrived in Ukraine. One thousand of these went to Initiative E+ or distribution to the front. We chose this partner because they have supplied the frontline military since 2014, and this organization was the first to start publicly fighting against poor tourniquets in 2022. They have made a significant difference on the front and we’re proud to be working with them.
We also sent 700 of these CATs to our longtime partnering organization Help Ukraine 22 Operation Palyanytsya, who distributed them today to the State Emergency Services of Ukraine and to a number of Armed Forces of Ukraine units.
Since July 2022, Mriya Aid has sent 6370 tourniquets to Ukraine. That translates to approximately a thousand tourniquets every 6 months - but we can do better.
To answer the plea of Ukrainians on the front and to increase their survivability, Mriya Aid continues to send the safest and most reliable tourniquets, the very best, the top-quality worldwide and the golden standard, CATs Generation 7.
As Ukrainians defend human life, we work to save their lives and preserve their limbs and health with quality tourniquets, and with everything else that saves lives.
Join us in this critical mission!
This week in Canada, we honoured all the brave men and women who faithfully served and defended our fundamental rights and freedoms. Our friends across the globe also commemorated fallen soldiers this week.
At Mriya Aid we also honour, remember and take action to support the men and women bravely defending freedom, values, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, and dying today so that others may live freely and in safety.
Read more: On September 3rd, russia struck a large educational institution in Poltava. Many of the injured there died because of a lack of quality tourniquets. Ihor Tkachov, a medic with the Hospitalliers wrote about this problem in Ukrainska Pravda.