Children and babies being treated at a children’s hospital in kyiv have been taken to a basement for their safety as Russian troops attack the Ukrainian capital.
Staff at Okhmadet Children’s Hospital, which specializes in treating children with cancer, said they wanted the world to know what is happening as Russia continues its attack on Ukraine.
Among the mothers in hospital is Maryna, whose nine-year-old son has a blood cancer that requires regular treatment.
“There’s shelling, sirens, we have to get down (down),” she told Reuters news agency. “We are also getting treatment here, medicine which we have, but we need more food…basic stuff.
“We need peace.”
On Saturday, three adults and three children were brought to the centre, also known as the National Specialized Children’s Hospital of Ukraine, after being caught in a nearby attack.
Hospital press officer Anastasia Maggeramova said a six-year-old boy was dead on arrival.
She said: “We heard an attack and after that people came in emergency vehicles.
“Now a child has died because of [the] massive attack.”
Maggeramova said hospital staff had heard the sound of fighting near the hospital for the past few days, although they had yet to reach the medical facility.
“Our doctors tried to do their best to save them and help [the victims],” she says.
“We want the world to know the truth: civilians are being attacked,” she said. “Children are suffering, people are suffering because of the war, because of the attacks, because of the terrible things that are happening right now here in Ukraine.
Hospital intensive care patients who cannot be moved have been placed in areas of the building that staff hope are the safest.
Emphasis is also placed on the safety of medical personnel.
“We also have to take care of the staff, because if they die or are injured, what do we do, who will treat the patients? asked Valery Bovkun, a microsurgeon at Ohmadyt.
Volodymyr Zhovnir, the hospital’s chief surgeon, said the hospital had stocked enough medicine for a month, but added that it needed food for the newborns.
“Of all the things we need peace the most…this is all just the tip of an iceberg. People ask me, for example, where to buy insulin for children, pharmacies don’t are not open.”
The hospital normally treats six to seven children a day for common conditions such as appendicitis, but that number has dropped dramatically. “They couldn’t disappear, they just can’t come here,” he said.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine is impacting medical care across the country.
The World Health Organization said on Sunday the country was short of oxygen, calling for safe passage for emergency imports as fighting rages.
“The oxygen supply situation is approaching a very dangerous point in Ukraine,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge said. in a press release.
Trucks are unable to transport oxygen supplies from factories to hospitals across the country, including the capital kyiv.
On Monday morning, the British Ministry of Defense tweeted an intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine, saying: “The bulk of Putin’s ground forces remain more than 30km north of kyiv, their advance having been slowed by Ukrainian forces defending Hostomel airfield, a key element. Russian objective for the first day of the conflict.
“Heavy fighting continues around Chernihiv and Kharkiv, but both cities remain under Ukrainian control.
“Logistical failures and fierce Ukrainian resistance continue to thwart the Russian advance.
“Despite continued attempts to suppress the details of the conflict to the Russian people, the Russian armed forces for the first time were forced to acknowledge that they had suffered losses.”
Reports suggest that Vladimir Putin thought Ukraine would fall within 48 hours, but after facing fierce opposition from Ukrainians, the conflict entered day five.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the invasion of Russia was now “overdue” and leaving troops in “disarray”.
“They based all of this on this sort of weird assumption that Ukrainians would welcome them as liberators, well President Putin took that assumption, and now that’s not the case that makes them stop. It causes them logistical problems,” he said. .
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