How MSF is responding
MSF teams remain in Ukraine, and we are currently seeking ways to adapt our response as the conflict situation evolves.
Our current emergency response
We currently work with approximately 120 international staff in Ukraine and employ more than 200 Ukrainian staff. More are joining the team every day. They work as medical staff (surgeons, doctors, nurses); psychologists; logistics and administration; and management.
Since the 24th of February MSF has brought more than 225 metric tonnes of medical and relief supplies into Ukraine. Much of it has already been dispatched to hospitals and health centres, or to the Ministry of Health for onward transport to the places where it is most needed. Our teams are currently present in Berehove, Bila Tserkva, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Mukachevo, Odesa, Poltava, Uzhhorod, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr.
Assisting displaced people
Many displaced people are now sheltering in Lviv and other towns in western Ukraine. Often, they have left their homes with only what they can carry. Local volunteers and civil society organisations are working hard to help them, but conditions are harsh, with available accommodation already full to overflowing and temperatures as low as -10 at night. MSF is donating a large supply of cold weather items (sleeping bags, warm clothes, tents) to civil society organisations supporting displaced people and refugees.
Overlapping medical needs
So far, the focus has been on surgical, trauma, ER (Emergency Room) and ICU (Intensive Care Unit) equipment and drugs. But a broader picture of other key medical items is starting to emerge insulin for diabetes patients, medicines for patients with other chronic diseases such as asthma, hypertension, or HIV.
Medical train
On 1 April we completed our first medical train referral, taking nine patients who had been wounded in or near Mariupol from hospitals in Zaporizhzhia to hospitals in Lviv. We transported them on a two-carriage train kitted out as a basic hospital ward, with a team of nine MSF medical staff on board. Six further referrals by this train have been completed, mostly taking patients from hospitals close to frontlines of the war in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but also one evacuation of seriously wounded patients from Kharkiv and one evacuation of babies and young infants from an orphanage in Zaporizhzhia. More than 270 patients have been medically evacuated to date, with their family members. Further medical referrals by train are planned as the urgent requests from hospitals in the east continue to grow, while a larger and more highly medicalised train is being got ready for use.
Regional responses