A maternity hospital not far from the front lines in Kyiv has become a clinic treating wounded soldiers and people injured in Russian strikes.
The head of the hospital, who asked for his name and the name of the facility to remain private over security fears, said many of his staff are now essentially living in the hospital — some with their families — and working around the clock trying to help victims.
“Currently, we have no maternity patients, but we have a lot of wounded local citizens and soldiers. Local people come to us when they need help with food and medicine, and we provide all urgent health care. The numbers are going up and people come 24/7,” he said. The hospital head added that that patients including women have been coming in with serious injuries in recent days.
We’ve had a local woman who died yesterday in our hospital because Russian bomb dropped near here. Some of the injuries are very, very serious,” he said.
For now, he said, the hospital is coping, despite normally specializing in maternity care.“We are well equipped for now, but the problem is that the number of people who are coming to us is increasing, and it’s really a lot of people with serious injuries and we don’t have enough staff if the numbers keep going up.”
He said the hospital is trying to secure equipment and materials that are intended for treating serious military wounds, something the hospital doesn’t normally stock in larger quantities.
We hear the fighting. Yesterday it was a little bit better, today is medium, but the Ukrainian army, I feel, is strong so we feel that it will be safe to stay and help our army,” he said.
At the same time, the hospital continues serving its core patients. 20 babies have been born here since the invasion started 10 days ago — all of them safe and healthy.
“They all went either home or traveled to western Ukraine,” the hospital’s chief said.
