A Ukranian boy is fighting for his life after falling into a pot of boiling water that left him with 70 percent burns, according to local reports.
Ivan Maletych, 2, is intensive care after falling into a 10-gallon pan of boiling water in his home in southern Ukraine on April 23.
“I heated the water to wash clothes,” his mother, Ivanna Maletych said, according to media outlet LMN. “We do not have a washing machine, so I do everything with my hands.”
According to local reports, she had left the pan to cool, and then became distracted by something.
She heard her son’s screams and realised that he had fallen into the pot.
According to LMN, the woman, who looks after her four children on her own, rushed to the neighbors, who drove them to the hospital.
Victor Pyzhevsky, head of the department of the 8th Lviv Clinical Hospital, told local media that the boy had suffered 70 percent burns and was in critical condition when he was brought in.
He has been put on an artificial ventilator.
Three days after the boy fell into the pot, doctors said that it was hard to know whether he would survive.
“The hardest days are still ahead,” Vasyl Savchin, the head of the burn center told Zaxid.net on April 26. “Between the 5th and 8th day after burns, the body begins to shed the burnt skin and then lots of toxins are released into the bloodstream.”
Savchin did not want to give a forecast as to whether the boy would survive, saying he would be able to give a more concrete answer in two weeks time.
According to Zaxid.net, only his face and the part of his body under his diaper were not burned.
A neighbor told LMN that the family had to use a stove and firewood for heating after the gas was shut off several months ago because they couldn’t pay the bills in their cottage in the village of Starosambirsky, in Ukraine’s Lviv Oblast region.
“Ivanka also has three older children,” the neighbor said. “She cares for them, the children are calm, they go to school, they never say anything bad about them in the village.”
With no money for her son’s treatment, the family have appealed for donations, and the village community have promised to help, according to Zaxid.net.
According to the Daily Mail, his mother said: “I am constantly in the hospital with my son.
“Doctors say nothing on his chances of survival.
“My heart is broken and I cannot forgive myself for what happened.”
Police are treating the case as an accident, according to the Daily Mail.
The tragic incident comes just one month after another Ukrainian child died after falling into a bucket of boiling water being used to prepare his bath.
Pictures taken by a local volunteer showed 11-month-old Daniil Chernenko swathed in bandages in his hospital bed in Odessa on March 18, after he suffered horrific burns to 80 percent of his body in the village of Salhany.
According to the volunteer, Katherine Nozhevnikova, only his toes and forehead were not burned.
His mother said that she had heated up a pan of water for his bath and put it on the floor of the bedroom below the table where she had put her son, according to the Daily Mail.
However, when she turned to get cold water to mix for a bath, he fell from the table into the boiling water.
“I saw how he fell in the boiling water,” she said, according to the Mail. “I rushed to the bucket and pulled him out.”
“I hugged him, then wrapped him in a cotton cloth. When I unwrapped him, I saw his skin was peeling off.”
He passed away 11 days later on March 29.
From The Epoch Times
