This is Ivan Korostin, director of the Puhachiv Orphanage for the Severely Handicapped. He took over directorship at the beginning of 1995, at a time when the orphanage had no heating, no warm water, and  the sanitary facilities were virtually nonexistent. There were gaping holes in the wall and the building structure was unsound. Within the first 8 months he changes all that, literally without any funds or support from the government. Ivan had a university degree in technical engineering and with it the knowledge of how to improve the building’s shortcomings. With the help of a few local volunteers he installed a gas heating system as well as steam boilers to produce warm water.

Ivan Korostin and his wife were both living in the Chernobyl Oblast at the time of the accident. All his peers are dead, he recollects, and by his account the nagging, painful arthritic rheumatism that plagues him, is rather negligible in comparison. His wife, however, is not so lucky. She is wheelchair bound and completely lost her function in both her legs.

I interviewed Ivan in 2011 and he has since retired. When he left the orphanage, Puhachiv had become a prime health care facility for handicapped children under his stewardship, with a sizable staff of professional health care workers attending to the 80 children calling Puhachiv their home. And it is one of the few facilities that has its own ambulance.