A man has raised more than £5,000 in a week to pay for medication for a Ukrainian family's diabetic daughter.

John Rice, 56, who is from Northampton and has lived in Slovakia for a decade, opened up his home to the family after they fled from their home in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine.

The cash raised will buy an insulin pump for 10-year-old Dasha, who has type 1 diabetes.

Her father Yehevny said: "This will change both her life and ours."

The 39-year-old dad was in tears and "visibly shaken with relief" after being told about the cash being raised so quickly, according to Mr Rice.

"The whole family are stuck in what I call the refugee cycle now, because it's hard to get a job without residency and impossible to get health care unless you have a job or you're resident - so you can see how difficult it is for them to fund Dasha's medication themselves," he said.

Dasha, her father and her mother Svetlana, 45, travelled by car for five days with their two cats before they settled near Trencin, Slovakia.

Mr Rice contacted the family through Facebook and opened up his home to them after learning they had a daughter of a similar age to his own.

Dasha was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2020 and has to have at least four injections of insulin a day.

The money raised by Mr Rice will mean the family can purchase an insulin pump which, combined with a continuous glucose monitor, will automatically deliver exact doses at the right time.

Dasha's father said: "We will not be in constant fear that she will fall into a hypoglycaemic coma, as almost happened recently."

The family has remained close to Mr Rice, despite now having moved into their own home in Slovakia, and Dasha has been enrolled in a local school.

Under its current martial law, the Ukrainian government forbids men age 18 to 60 from leaving the country, but Dasha's father was allowed to go because he was his daughter's carer.