By Yuliya Nogovitsyna and Anindita Rochili
The war in Ukraine has brought immense hardship, but it has not broken the spirit of its people. Since 2011, Tabletochki, the country’s largest paediatric charity, has stood beside children with cancer and their families. Approaching its 15th anniversary, the foundation has evolved from a volunteer initiative united around the effort to bring anti-mucositis gels from abroad – previously unavailable to Ukrainian children with cancer – into a systemic force providing a holistic “menu of services” that includes medicine, diagnostics, and long-term mental health support.
Ukraine lags behind high-income countries in childhood cancer survival rates. As a result, palliative care aimed at alleviating the suffering of children with cancer and their families is of utmost importance but remains fragmented and underfunded. Despite universal health coverage guaranteeing access to such care, public hospitals often lack the necessary expertise, trained personnel, multidisciplinary teams, and resources to provide high-quality palliative and end-of-life care for children with incurable cancer and their families.
Tabletochki’s Approach
Since 2016, Tabletochki have utilized an integrated palliative care model where family coordinators, pediatric oncologists, anaesthesiologists, nutrition specialists and psychologists work in tandem. In a landscape where “palliative care” is often misunderstood as merely “deathbed care,” Program Director, Yuliya Nogovitsyna, and her team are redefining it as an integral part of the treatment course.
The organization operates without its own facilities, instead building a network across hospitals and family doctors to ensure care reaches children where they are. By leveraging telecommunications technologies, mobile banking, and courier delivery services, the foundation ensures that even the poorest families in the most remote rural areas receive therapies, procedures, care, and psychoemotional support at home, helping make life meaningful and comfortable regardless of prognosis. These efforts are supported by international donors and partners, such as Foundation S and GlobalGiving, who enable the foundation to sustain and expand its services nationwide.
In 2025, the foundation supported more than 120 families affected by incurable childhood cancer – the highest number in its history. Each family received clinical guidance, financial assistance for medical supplies, diagnostic tests, transportation, and daily needs, as well as psychological counseling and emotional support.
When a child passes away, the journey is not over. Tabletochki continues to stand by families through psychological counseling, remembrance gifts, peer support groups for bereaved parents, an annual Memorial Day, and magnolia tree planting ceremonies.
Advocacy Amidst Crisis
The Ukrainian healthcare system was undergoing significant reform in 2017–2021 just before the pandemic and the full-scale invasion. While the war brought financial constraints where defense is prioritized, it also served as a catalyst for social awakening.
“The war really helped in waking up society,” Yuliya notes. “Issues of those with severe disabilities are discussed more openly in mass media, making it easier to advocate for the right to be pain-free and for the dignified life till the very end. The impact is felt most deeply at the bedside. In the past, children often died alone in PICUs due to restrictive hospital policies; today, joint advocacy work ensures parents can remain with their children.”
The elevated public awareness, combined with a wave of global solidarity in 2022–2023, allowed for significant capacity-building and free international training for Ukrainian physicians. Tabletochki adds to this through their educational initiatives aimed at bridging gaps in formal medical education and equipping healthcare professionals with essential skills. The systemic work also includes collaborating with the Ministry of Health and National Health Service of Ukraine to move beyond “declarative” quality control – that mostly just tick the boxes – toward a functional system that meets a child’s basic and emotional needs.
The Five-Year Retrospective and Power of People
The routine is grueling, and from the “inside,” progress can feel slow. However, Yuliya emphasizes the importance of stepping back. “If you look back not one month, but five years, the huge hurdles are behind us,” she says. The system has not collapsed; in fact, some aspects are stronger than ever.
Ultimately, Yuliya believes that persistent professional growth and value-driven leadership are the heartbeat of change. To truly transform the healthcare landscape, we must find and nurture passionate physicians and advocates who are willing to initiate change from within. Empowered by training and a shared philosophy, these individuals will ensure that the progress made today becomes the standard for every child in Ukraine tomorrow.
About Yuliya Nogovitsyna
Yuliya Nogovitsyna, MA, LLM, MS, PhD, is Program Director at Tabletochki, Ukraine’s largest childhood cancer charity foundation. She leads a team of 21 and oversees comprehensive assistance programs spanning medical supplies, hospital renovations, palliative care, outpatient housing, psychosocial support, survivorship care, and healthcare workforce training, reaching more than 1,300 families each year. A leading pediatric cancer advocate, she has served since 2018 on Ministry of Health and National Health Service of Ukraine working groups, contributing to centralized medical procurement, the National Cancer Control Plan, and national medical standards. She holds master’s degrees in NGO Management and Global Child Health, as well as a PhD in International Public Law. Since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, she and the Tabletochki team have helped evacuate and support over 1,600 children with cancer through the SAFER Ukraine initiative.
