Allies ready to help wounded Ukrainian soldiers
Treatment and rehabilitation of Ukrainian soldiers was named as one of the main priorities of NATO-Ukraine co-operation during the Alliance’s summit in Wales last week. According to the joint statement from the NATO-Ukraine Commission, NATO will “provide assistance to Ukraine to rehabilitate injured military personnel.”
The humanitarian commitment follows a request to NATO, in late August, when authorities in Kyiv asked for assistance in the transport, treatment and subsequent rehabilitation of wounded military staff.
The first group of wounded Ukrainian soldiers arrived in Germany last week. A special flight of the German air force transported 20 injured troops.
The first plane with injured soldiers landed in Berlin. Five soldiers were taken to the Bundeswehr Hospital in Berlin, while others were sent to hospitals in Hamburg, Koblenz and Ulm.
After a medical examination of patients, Joachim Hoitz, head physician at Bundeswehr Hospital, told reporters that all the Ukrainian soldiers were in stable condition.
“Two soldiers have already been operated on,” Hoitz said. “They had wounds from bullets and explosions all over their bodies. Treatment will last a few weeks. Then the soldiers will return back to Ukraine.”
Germany agreed to treat wounded Ukrainian soldiers and cover all transportation and rehabilitation expenses in German hospitals after Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met recently in Kyiv.
More European cities announced readiness to receive wounded Ukrainian soldiers. Ukrainian doctors held an online conference with their Estonian colleagues last week. Estonian hospitals are ready to receive Ukrainian soldiers for treatment.
“These will be 15 soldiers with wounded limbs,” Sergiy Ruzhenko, head doctor of the Dnipropetrovsk regional hospital in Estonia, told SETimes. “We are now preparing all necessary documents and medical examinations of the wounded soldiers to send them to Estonia and maybe a little bit further to Lithuania.”
Volunteers, together with doctors in Ukraine’s hospitals, are drawing up a list of wounded soldiers who need treatment abroad.
“We recommend sending abroad for treatment those soldiers who have a chance to return to normal life after rehabilitation,” Natalia Protsenko, a volunteer at the Kyiv central military hospital, told SETimes. “If we send heavily wounded soldiers it will mean that we give them false hope for a full treatment and recovery.”
Doctors said part of their challenge is to explain future opportunities after rehabilitation.
“We explain to them all the consequences and further prospects,” Ruzhenko said. “Their reaction is different, because they have to realise they need to continue living without a leg or arm. That’s why it is very important to study the psychological conditions of every patient before sending them abroad.”
The Dnipropetrovsk regional hospital is mostly taking care of military personnel wounded in the anti-terrorist operation. But only some of them will be able to receive treatment abroad.
“The problem we are facing is lack of special medical aircraft for transportation of our patients,” Ruzhenko said. “We decided to send abroad soldiers who can sit and can be transported in such a position without any harm to their health.”
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