Hospitals across Ukraine are struggling for safety of terminally ill children

Two weeks ago, Nastiya left her town ‘Vasylivka’ in the eastern region of Ukraine to bring her five-year-old son named as ‘Volodymyr’ to a hospital in Zaporizhzhia.

The boy was undergoing a problem of internal bleeding and was in a severe condition. He has since bettered, but the mother and son cannot return home.

On February 24, 2022, President of Russia Vladimir Putin has ordered the military to call a full-scale invasion of Ukraine through air, land and sea. Ukraine’s resistance has been fierce, repelling attacks on the capital city of Kyiv & other major cities, but battles have intensified in recent days.

Vasylivka is one of the main towns that are being heavily attacked over by defending Ukrainian forces and advancing the Russian military. People who attempted to enter the town to deliver aid said they were turned back by the Ukrainian army because of the Russian shelling.

Meanwhile, Nastya said, “Of course I am worried, I have three other children at home. There has been shelling, and they are hiding in the basement zone.”

Otherwise, inside the hospital, newborn babies in incubators queued the corridor. Doctors have displaced them here to protect them in the case of Russian shelling.

As per one of the doctors, “This area is safeguarded from shrapnel if there is a blast, so we put the babies here. It is deep inside the building between two walls.”

At the same time, in to the cold and damp zone of the basement area of the hospital, staff members are arranging beds for possible transport of patients.

As per one of the officials from ICU, “They all have terminal diseases. They are incurable, so we have to leave them here in case of an air alert as they are dependent on oxygen and resuscitation equipment, and we cannot transport everything necessary for them there.”