Children should not sleep in basements

Okhmatdet (protection of motherhood and childhood) is a Ukrainian multidisciplinary diagnostic medical institution that provides specialized highly qualified medical care to the children of Ukraine.

Annually, it treats up to 18 thousand children in 620 hospital beds; about 20 thousand children receive urgent medical care in the hospital trauma unit.

Note that approx. 7 thousand operations are performed a year in the hospital. The departments perform all types of surgical interventions, except cardiac surgery.

It should be added that Okhmatdet is the largest children's hospital in Ukraine.  It is a small town of different buildings where specialists of different fields carry out their work.  And if it is possible to provide medical care on the "pre-war level" in such a vast system, the conditions in the shelters depend too much on the condition in the basement.  Each building has its own.  And none of the hospital staff had any idea that they would be deploying makeshift operating rooms and wards here...

As a result of the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine, the seriously ill children of Okhmatdet are forced to hide from Russian attacks in the basements of the hospital.

Instead of hospital boxes there are basement rooms.  For eight consecutive days, patients have been here, hiding from enemy shelling.  Among them are children with orphan diseases, patients after neurosurgical operations, children with cancer, newborns and many other serious patients.

The hospital has now become not only a place of treatment but also a shelter and temporary home for mothers with children stuck here during and after treatment. There are parents and children who were admitted to the hospital the day before the war. Families who have lost contact with their families. Today they are all forced to sleep on the floor and mattresses, under the sound of explosions and alarm sirens.  The children don't fully understand what is going on, because they are surrounded by an incredible amount of love and care, but from their mothers the medics hear only one question: "When will it all end?" and in their eyes they read "exhausted".

Thanks to concerned citizens and volunteers, they bring food, water, and necessary items.  Doctors and staff are at Okhmatdet 24 hours a day, taking care of every patient and resident of the hospital.

The staff of Okhmatdet appeals to the whole world: the aggressor must be stopped!  Children should not sleep in basements and doctors should not perform complex operations in bomb shelters.  They will, of course, hold out.  Because they are all amazing: the army, the citizens, the doctors, the parents and the children. But this horror must be stopped as quickly as possible.

Volunteer-physician Ruslan Agayev