The Innocent Vulnerable

A mother tends to her child who is undergoing cancer treatment in the bomb shelter. (Photo: Chris McGraph/Getty)

"These are patients who can not receive medical treatment at home, they cannot survive without medication, without medical treatment and medical workers."

"Of all things we need peace most ... all of this is the tip [of] an iceberg ... people are, for example, asking me where to buy insulin for children, pharmacies are not open."

Chief surgeon, Volodymyr Zhovnir, Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital, Kyiv

"There are bombings, sirens, we have to go [downstairs]."

"We also receive treatment here, medications we have, but we need more food ... basic stuff."

Maryna, mother of 9-yr-old cancer patient

Children were moved to the basement floor of Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital amid Russian attacks in Kyiv (Photo: Aytac Unal/Getty)

Under the Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital in Ukraine's capital city is the unfinished cement basement which now sees service as an underground bunker, housing dozens of children and their parents. Where they try to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, sheltering from Russian bombing runs and artillery fire targeting civilian areas. They recline on mats. Some of the children must be connected to drips, others require additional oxygen.

 

Those patients who belong in intensive care cannot be moved. They have instead been placed in 'safe' areas (relatively speaking), of the building, where the thought is they may be less susceptible to strikes because of positioning. Other children sleep on chairs in reception areas, or along the corridors. Needless to say, it is not only the children and their attending parents who are in line of becoming victims of an errant bomb hitting the  hospital.

 

The safety and security of hospital personnel is yet another issue of concern, since care of these small patients is entirely dependent on the physical condition of those professionals in the medical community working out of the hospital dependent on them "We also must take care of personnel, because if they die or get injured, what do we do, who will treat patients?" Valery Bovkun, microsurgeon at the hospital asks rhetorically.

 

Older children too ill to be returned to their homes or to leave the capital with their families to escape the Russian invasion, are trying to adjust to life under siege. They are told to stay away from windows. Many lie in corridors on intravenous drips. The entire hospital population; staff, patients, family members, live in a state of perpetual shock at being caught up in a war situation none might have imagined becoming their reality, even a few days previously.

 

They focus on survival.

 

The hospital, as the largest of its kind in Ukraine, cares for up to 600 patients normally, bur at the present time the patient load has been reduced to 200. Surgeons and nurses operate on a 13-year-old boy who was wounded in the armed clashes. Four children up to that time were treated for shrapnel and bullet wounds, as victims of shelling in and around Kyiv, along with skirmishes between Russian and Ukrainian forces. One of those young patients is in critical condition. 

 

Children with cancer hold signs that say “Stop War” in the bomb shelter of an oncology center in Kyiv (Photo by Aris Messinis / AFP)

 

On Monday, air raid sirens wailed through the eerily empty streets of Kyiv, giving warning of another possible missile strike by Russia. In Russian parlance its actions throughout Ukraine represent a "special operation". Maryna, the mother of a child suffering with a blood cancer requiring constant treatment, is on the verge of tears, explaining the situation requiring everyone to hurry down to the dank hospital basement to wait out the strikes.

Somehow the hospital to date has been spared, even as the Russian artillery bombardment has reached the city outskirts. The haphazard sound of gunfire in recent days reminds the staff and other hospital occupants that not much distance separates them from the conflict. Chief surgeon Dr.Zhovnir explains that the hospital had stockpiled sufficient medications to last a month, but that there is a shortage of food for newborns.

He speaks as well of children unable to travel to the hospital when emergency situations erupt. In normal circumstances the hospital treats six to seven children daily for medical issues such as appendicitis. That number has dramatically dropped. "They could not have vanished. they simply cannot come here", he states resignedly.

Children lined the corridors of the basement floor of the shelter of Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital: (Photo: Aytac Unal/Getty)