Tag: Ukrainian

Ukrainian doctor visits Rifle’s Grand River Health, seeking medical supplies and medicine for front line

Ukrainian doctor visits Rifle’s Grand River Health, seeking medical supplies and medicine for front line
Grand River Health’s Dr. Michael Duehrssen, remaining, and Ukrainian Dr. Serhii Serdeniuk unload professional medical provides in Ukraine in March 2022.
Courtesy/Annick Pruett

Two Grand River Well being medical professionals and their households went to Ukraine considerably less than two months immediately after Russia invaded. They introduced with them medical provides, $4,000 really worth of prescription drugs and hundreds of critical understanding.

Medical practitioners Michael Duehrssen and Heath Cotter taught younger Ukrainian combatants how to area gown wounds. They addressed unwell refugees. A single of their daughters played harp for war-stressed orphans.

During this humanitarian mission, the two Rifle medical professionals worked facet-by-aspect with two Ukrainian physicians: spouse and wife Serhii and Yuliia Serdeniuk. 

Shortly just after 6 p.m. Jap European Time on Thursday, Dr. Serhii battled intermittent blackouts as he spoke with the Write-up Independent more than WhatsApp, a absolutely free, global communication company.

A distorted man’s voice muffled around an intercom at Angelia Clinic, a non-public apply positioned among a fleet of tall, block residences about two miles east of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, whilst Dr. Serhii rationalized why he’s heading to temporarily go away Ukraine for, of all destinations, Rifle, Colorado.

“I want to meet as (lots of) people today as possible to request you to guidance our provider,” he claimed, calmly, in his very best English. “Just yesterday our medical machines for dentistry broke and we have to have $10,000 to substitute that.”

Grand River Wellness Group Relations Director Annick Pruett explained Dr. Serhii, who worked so closely with Cotter and Duehrssen, is slated to look at Grand River Health’s Colorado River Place from 5:30-7 p.m. Wednesday. Grand River Health and fitness is situated at 501 Airport Road.

“He will be supplying an update on the problem there as effectively as an update on the new clinic they have developed,” she explained.

Serhii is director of a cellular clinic device. These rolling health-related bastions go to and serve the war’s front lines, correct now predominantly on the jap edges of the country. He has so significantly conducted about 60-65 clinics, each individual a person serving about 30 people today daily.

Provides are usually dwindling, he stated. Since Russia has changed its practices from a unsuccessful blitzkrieg approach to a brutal war of attrition, hospitals, educational institutions — even sites wherever they make pharmaceuticals — keep on to be targeted by extended-selection missiles.

“Because of war, Russians bombed two of the most important factories who produced treatment for Ukraine,” Dr. Serhii explained. “Right now, even if we have money, we can’t obtain it in Ukraine, for the reason that it’s not currently being made for Ukraine.”

Dr. Serhii Serdeniuk, remaining, throughout a training session in Ukraine in March 2022.
Submitted/Annick Pruett

Dr. Serhii grew far more animated as he ongoing to listing off even more professional medical wants. This includes everything and everything, from $20,000 for a new ultrasound device and a newer battery, to psychological medicines due to the fact anxiety amongst Ukrainians is now popular. As blackouts keep on, Dr. Serhii operates with a flashlight, occasionally even just candlelight. 

Just this week, Dr. Serhii would take a vehicle ride across Ukraine to Warsaw, Poland. From there, a flight to Munich, Germany. Then a flight from Munich to Frankfurt, Germany. From Frankfurt, Denver Global Airport. From DIA, the ascent alongside Interstate 70 to Rifle.

Dr. Serhii then became apprehensive. He does not want to leave for Colorado, he reported. He would fairly remain and enable as numerous men and women as he can. At this instant he also remembered the enable he acquired from foreign medical doctors, together with Cotter and Duehrssen.

“These definitely brave men, they introduced massive containers complete of health-related provides,” he stated.

Physicians Cotter and Duehrssen at the time joined Dr. Serhii on a go to to a Ukrainian village in close proximity to the Romanian border. A contingent of refugees had lately arrived from the war-torn city of Mariupol, one particular of the most intensely devastated metropolitan areas of the whole war so considerably. 

Dr. Serhii stated a single of the refugees, a 13-year-old boy, had been bleeding heavily from his nose for fifty percent an hour straight. With Dr. Cotter’s guidance, the bleeding stopped in 3 minutes, and the boy of about 110 pounds survived.

“Dr. Heath individually stopped the bleeding,” Dr. Serhii mentioned. “That was a miracle that he’d been there just in that second, when he was required mostly.

“When we stopped the bleeding, (the boy) commenced to vomit blood. We gathered 50 percent a liter of blood he swallowed right before.”

The past 11 months have certainly been everything but regular for Dr. Serhii, whose initially taste of war came when he was named up as a military doctor in 2015. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Dr. Serhii moved his household from Kyiv to Germany, and they have given that come again.

He has food stuff, a roof more than his head and heat, he explained. Anything in Kyiv is “not so undesirable,” he joked facetiously. But he’s also misplaced much, including buddies.

“I shed,” he reported poignantly. He then sighed. “My mate, he was a colonel in the Ukrainian Army… Yeah, I shed a whole lot of persons.”

Dec. 21, 2022 marked a historical working day in United States’ historical past. It was the initial time, considering that British Key Minister Winston Churchill did it in 1941, that a foreign nationwide leader arrived to Washington to handle Congress. In his speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained that, despite ongoing help from the U.S., there however desires to be a lot more.

“Your guidance is essential, not just to stand in this sort of a fight, but to get to the turning place to gain on the battlefield,” he explained to Congress. “We have artillery, sure. We have it. Is it adequate? Fairly actually, not definitely.”

On a significantly scaled down variation, Dr. Serhii’s pay a visit to to Rifle is chock complete of the exact same intentions.

“I have just just one week to meet as lots of persons as attainable,” he reiterated. “Because I’ll be again Tuesday to Ukraine, and Wednesday we’ll go to Mykolaiv. It’s a metropolis on the shore of the Black Sea, and they bomb it each and every day. We guarantee the persons we will be there and provide them for 3 days.”

“I can’t miss out on this excursion.”

Post Independent western Garfield County reporter and Assistant Editor Ray K. Erku can be achieved at 612-423-5273 or rerku@postindependent.com

Supporting capacity building in Ukrainian Hospitals: Polish Medical Mission organizes shipments of medical equipment funded by the Financial Mechanism of European Economic Area and the Norwegian Financial Mechanism – Ukraine

By Rowan Joffe Mclachlan:

Polish Healthcare Mission (PMM) done customized deliveries of clinical tools for 50 Hospitals across 22 Oblasts of Ukraine on the 6th of December. Above the course of the 6-month project and many thanks to funding from Norwegian Funds, PMM was equipped to help the hospitals in their provision of an average of 255,600 people a thirty day period with lifesaving health care care. The full task benefit was 1,000,000 EUR.

Just after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine the health care program across Ukraine was under intensive force, with a substantial boost in both equally war wounded and IDP’s positioning all oblasts under pressure. This necessitated the enhance in potential for hospitals across the state.

In June of this 12 months, PMM began the system of range and get in touch with of hospitals that PMM could access and guidance. PMM determined the 50 hospitals most in essential will need of aid that had been accessible for shipping. Following setting up call with hospitals, PMM recognized the lists of items that they most necessary in buy to guidance their things to do. This was facilitated with the advancement of tailor made get sorting software program in cooperation with Qualtrics. Every single specific healthcare facility was directed to buy a custom shipment to assist their particular wants and things to do. These products have been then acquired on the Polish professional sector and shipped straight to hospitals.

The tools involved advanced products these as cardio screens, autoclaves, electro suctions, USG’s and centrifuges for surgical and ICU departments. In addition, substantial quantities of surgical instruments ended up bought and dispersed as nicely a broad wide range of insignificant items of gear important for the day-to-day operations of the professional medical departments. Also sent were a quantity of incubators to neonatal wards across the nation, PMM can now report that those incubators have presently supported the delivery and care of more than 1,000 newborns.

Together with these clinical machines was sent a substantial number of critical consumables surgical masks, robes, disinfectant and also frequent medicines that were being supplied by our in-variety donors.

The distribution of these goods was at situations difficult provided the security scenario in Ukraine and the injury to infrastructure and PMM is indebted to our associates, both of those NGO and commercial. The Ukrainian NGO UNITERS supported over 40 deliveries to really hard-to-attain regions of the place, allowing for our assist to achieve the points in which it was desired most. In the meantime, in Poland the business logistics agency ROBANO Express Thermo Logistics shared each their warehouse place, supply drivers and significant know-how to let a really helpful collaboration. Put together with PMM’s committed logistic crew it was doable to establish a monitored and accountable chain of distribution that stretched from suppliers to beneficiary hospitals.

Considering the fact that the shut of the challenge PMM has now began conducting new shipments of professional medical gear to equally hospitals by now supported and recently recognized ones. Developing on the networks and techniques founded throughout this undertaking PMM will be able to go on our assist of Ukrainian hospitals into 2023.

8-year-old Ukrainian refugee reunited with vital medical equipment

“It’s important for Mark’s mobility and quality of life that he has these. They were impossible for us to replace because what costs $600 in Ukraine, costs $6,000 here in Canada.” — Bogdan Motorenko

8-year-old Ukrainian refugee reunited with vital medical equipment
Yelzaveta Motorenko, her eight-year-old son Mark and her husband Bogdan were all smiles on Saturday as Mark was reunited with some vital medical equipment that his family had been forced to leave behind when they fled Ukraine in late February. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

Mark Motorenko let out joyful squeals Saturday morning as Captain Doug Petti lifted him into a fire truck at Burnaby’s hall No. 1. 

It was the first time the eight-year-old Ukrainian refugee had seen inside such a vehicle. Normally, he cowers if sirens from the truck blast through his new Burnaby neighbourhood.

“The sounds scare him,” said his mother Yelyzaveta, 26, who fled from Kyiv to Canada five months ago with her husband Bogdan, 28.

The family came to Metro Vancouver seeking a better life for their son, who lives with cerebral palsy.

After Mark was lifted back down from the truck and into his wheelchair, he was presented with five large gifts by Petti, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley and Peter Julian, the MP of New Westminster-Burnaby.

The group invited the family to the firehall Saturday for a surprise.

Underneath the wrapping paper was the standing device Mark had used back home to strengthen his muscles, which are affected by a developmental disease that affects his movement, balance and posture.

Mark Motorenko smiles for the camera on Saturday as he was reunited with some vital medical equipment that his family had been forced to leave behind when they fled Ukraine in late February.
Mark Motorenko smiles for the camera on Saturday as he was reunited with some vital medical equipment that his family had been forced to leave behind when they fled Ukraine in late February. Photo by Francis Georgian /PNG

The child smiled with glee to see the return of remnants of his old life. The other gifts were his walker and tricycle.

“It’s important for Mark’s mobility and quality of life that he has these,” Bogdan said. “They were impossible for us to replace because what costs $600 in Ukraine, costs $6,000 here in Canada.”

Since war broke out where they lived in Kyiv in February, both parents agree that their son hasn’t quite been himself.

Before Russia’s invasion, Mark had made progress with daily physiotherapy and had begun to stand on his own and took his first step. But since Feb. 25, when the blast of a nearby missile awoke the child in terror, he has been reluctant to move.

“He is very scared,” Yelyzaveta said. “That’s why we left, he was so nervous every night and would cry all night about the war.”

The Motorenkos fled the Ukrainian capital days after the conflict began in late February. They left their belongings behind.

By September, settled in the Lower Mainland, they reached out to Julian’s office in desperate need of retrieving their son’s specialized medical equipment.

“It would cost thousands of dollars to ship their special needs child’s medical equipment from Ukraine to Canada,” the MP said Saturday in a news release. “It was impossible for a refugee family, fleeing from a war zone, to come up with such an enormous amount.”

So, the Burnaby Firefighters Charitable Society quickly stepped in to cover the costs.

“We’re just happy to get this equipment back into Mark’s hands,” Petti said.

The family plans to haul the equipment home, to Burnaby, where they live with sponsors Susan Millar and Deepak Sahasrabudhe.

Julian said Saturday that hundreds of other Burnaby residents have offered up their homes to Ukrainian refugees this year.

“Tragically, as this brutal invasion continues we will see more families coming.”

The MP acknowledged the serious challenges the refugees face upon arriving in Canada. “My office is hearing some Ukrainian families here are struggling to put food on the table right now.”

Julian said, “the important thing is that as they come, they are being supported by their new community — as Mark has.”

Yelyzaveta hopes that her son will soon find the courage to try to walk again, with help of the equipment.

“We’re thankful for all the Canadians who have helped us and Mark,” Yelyzaveta said.

“If he is happy, we are happy.”

sgrochowski@postmedia.com

twitter.com/sarahgrochowski

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