Displaced child cancer patients flood western Ukraine hospital
Ukrainian hospitals are in a precarious state, short on supplies with exhausted staff
In the pediatric cancer ward of a hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, young victims of Russia's war with Ukraine have come to Dr. Roman Kizyma for help that he fears he will not soon be able to provide.
"We are doing terribly," he told CBC News during a visit to the Western Ukrainian Specialized Children's Medical Center.
"I think most of [the children] will become indirect victims of these Russian army attacks, because they will die because of the interruption of treatment, because of infections — and we can do nothing."
In some cases, the communities where the children lived, such as the Ukraine capital Kyiv, became too unsafe. In other instances, hospital beds were needed to treat civilians and soldiers wounded in the war.
Lviv has received hundreds of thousands of displaced Ukrainians from the country's eastern regions over the past 12 days of the war, including hundreds of young cancer patients.
While many hope to eventually receive treatment in other European countries, Lviv is often the first stop on the journey.
Hospital beyond capacity
Kizyma said his pediatric ward can usually comfortably accommodate 30 young patients, but now it's far beyond capacity with more than 100.
"Even in big centres like Sick Kids in Toronto ... you cannot face a couple of days of 100 children with cancer and give them appropriate care," he said, referring to the Hospital for Sick Children.
Kizyma said he has medical supplies for at least the next several days — possibly a week or more — but most assuredly he says the cancer drugs the hospital has on hand will run out before the end of March, and he is not hopeful about being able to replenish them.
While Lviv has yet to be targeted by Russian aircraft strikes or missiles, air raid sirens remain a fairly regular occurrence, forcing staff to halt cancer treatments and race with the children, their families and colleagues into air raid shelters below the hospital.
"We don't feel safe here," Kizyma said.
In the pediatric oncology ward, a CBC News crew met a 12-year-old girl named Anna and her family.
She said she arrived three days ago on a special train from Kyiv with 40 other sick children. "We were evacuated from Kyiv, from the children's hospital, because of shelling," she said.
Anna, who has lost all of her hair from chemotherapy treatments, said she was diagnosed with leukemia and was nearing completion of her treatments when Russia attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24.
Now her family is hoping to cross the border into Poland, where she can finish off her final three chemotherapy sessions.
Countries, groups mobilize with supplies
Anna's grandmother, Tetiana, who sat on the bed next to her, said Anna was training to be a dancer and was part of a troupe that was going to perform in Bulgaria.
But then she got sick, and then the war started.
"My granddaughter is the best. I love my granddaughter. I love my country," Tetiana said. "She is afraid because she doesn't understand why they are shooting."
Several European-based aid groups, along with governments and the World Health Organization, have been working to transport young cancer patients out of Ukraine.
A German-based NGO reported that it helped move 21 children and adolescents to cancer hospitals in the city of Essen, in western Germany, earlier this week, while 13 children with the disease have been evacuated to Italy.
The same group says it has also been sending large trucks with up to 20 tonnes of medical supplies across the border to Ukrainian hospitals in cities such as Zhytomyr, in the central part of the country.
Médecin Sans Frontières said this week that it has been able to ship some medical supplies for intensive care units and trauma wards into Ukraine by train, but the process has been slow and complicated.
Supplies critically low
Many Ukrainian hospitals, particularly in devastated cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol, have reported that medical supplies are critically low.
Anesthetists working in Kyiv have reportedly been sleeping at hospitals and working around the clock to keep up with an influx of patients, according to Reuters. It's the same story at the national pediatric hospital in the capital.
The head of the World Health Organization has accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting hospitals and other health-care centres.
The Ukrainian news agency Interfax claims that a total of 16 hospitals have been damaged in Russian attacks and that six doctors have been killed.
In Lviv, around the corner from the oncology ward, CBC News was introduced to other children who are on dialysis machines.
Dr. Roman Andrunevych, a nephrologist, said his staff made the difficult decision not to go to shelters when the sirens wail, as it is too disruptive to dialysis treatment and patients are already in a vulnerable state.
"Patients are connected to the machine, so we can't stop the procedure and we can't return the blood to the body. So we are staying with our patients here," he said.
"So we close all the windows, we close all doors and we stay here with our patients. We continue to work."
Practically every staff member CBC News spoke to at the children's hospital in Lviv said while they were thankful for the support and help that Western countries, including Canada, are providing, Ukraine's dire situation demands even more.
Dr. Roman Kizyma, the pediatric oncologist, stressed that he believes the best way to save Ukraine's children is for the Western military alliance NATO to impose a no-fly zone over the country and intercept Russian aircraft before they drop their bombs.
"Otherwise, people are just watching and say 'Yes, please stay strong.' But they're just watching the fascists [Russians] bombard a country in the middle of Europe."
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