For vulnerable child cancer patients in Ukraine’s capital city, the only option is to go underground.
As Russian shelling continues and a military convoy approaches Kyiv, patients at the Okhmatdyt National Children's Specialized Hospital have gathered on makeshift beds in the basement. A group of young cancer patients hold handwritten signs that say “Stop War.”
"These are patients who cannot receive medical treatment at home, they cannot survive without medication, without medical treatment and medical workers," said the hospital's chief surgeon Volodymyr Zhovnir, according to Reuters. The hospital currently has around 200 patients, while its normal volume is around 600, he said. Images from Okhmatdyt also show newborn babies whose first days on earth are in the basement bomb shelter.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t just forcing vulnerable patients underground. It’s created a dire need for more medical personnel and also threatens essential supplies like oxygen. Under the Geneva Conventions, medical personnel and medical facilities like hospitals are supposed to be protected from enemy attacks during wartime. Human Rights Watch reports that Central City Hospital in the eastern Ukraine region of Donetska was hit by Russian cluster munitions last week, which killed four civilians and injured 10 people, including six medical workers.
On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Liashko said there were Russian airstrikes around a city hospital in Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine and that a doctor was killed in the village of Kukhari near Kyiv in a series of Facebook posts. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the country’s doctors for their “moral strength” in saving people “around the clock” in a speech earlier in the day.
Liashko stressed there is an “urgent need for healthcare workers,” and has appealed to foreign medical workers to aid Ukraine’s hospitals. Under martial law, the government will recognize the professional qualifications of doctors and nurses from outside countries. The Ministry of Health has also launched a crypto wallet to collect donations for the country’s hospitals.
Liashko also called on doctors in Russia to condemn the actions of the country’s military. “This is terrorism, because your military is shelling peaceful neighborhoods of our cities, shooting at ambulances, destroying our hospitals with bombs, refusing to bring medicines and food to hospitals,” he said in a statement. Liashko said 16 children had been killed so far and more than 45 had been injured as of the sixth day of the war.
Over the weekend, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge warned that many Ukrainian hospitals were running low on medical oxygen and “nearing a very dangerous point.” Medical oxygen is important for many hospitalized Covid-19 patients, which number around 1,700 in Ukraine, as well as other patients from newborns to the elderly. The WHO says it is trying to increase imports of medical oxygen and trying to coordinate a safe transit corridor via Poland.
Gasworld Business Intelligence estimates that prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ukraine’s medical oxygen demand was between 140 to 150 metric tons per day and this rose to around 350 to 380 metric tons per day during the pandemic. Under normal conditions, Gasworld says Ukraine is able to produce around 450 to 460 metric tons of liquid oxygen for commercial and medical use per day, but the invasion has likely greatly reduced production.
“Not being able to transport oxygen cylinders means that even the ready oxygen that exists in tanks at manufacturing sites is not able to reach hospitals,” Prashant Yadav, an expert on healthcare supply chains and a professor at INSEAD, told Forbes in an email. “Onsite oxygen generation at major hospitals would also get impacted if the steady supply of critical chemicals/catalysts required for oxygen production is disrupted.” One of the key chemical components to produce medical oxygen known as zeolite is in short supply in the region, according to the WHO.
One of the large medical oxygen suppliers in Ukraine, German-based Messer Group, declined to comment. A spokesperson for another medical oxygen manufacturer U.K.-based Linde said the company was “closely tracking the events unfolding in Ukraine while taking steps to guarantee the safety of our employees and the continuous production and delivery of critical medical oxygen.”
In a statement released over the weekend, Ukraine’s Health Minister Liashko called on the WHO and United Nations to stop cooperating with Moscow, saying Russia cannot “simultaneously wage a bloody war and influence regional European humanitarian policies.”
“Instead of ensuring supplies of medicines or hospital equipment, we spend time looking for bulletproof vests and helmets for health workers,” said Liashko. “Health workers are at the forefront of the fight against the enemy, together with our military, they are defending Ukraine at the cost of their own lives.”
