A heroic MP has told how she went to Ukraine to train doctors in war-zone medicine – and ended up coming to the aid of a fleeing family whose cars were shot up by a Russian armoured vehicle.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour MP for Tooting, went to Lviv with NGO MedGlobal as they delivered 170 crates of urgent supplies.
Taim on her eighth humanitarian trip since becoming an MP in 2016 was to train 250 doctors in treating civilians caught in the Russian attack.
Dr Allin-Khan, who also worked as an A&E doctor on the Covid front line in the UK, said: “Because my expertise for the last 14 years has been humanitarian medicine, I specialise in that sort of work in war zones and disaster settings.
“The key focus was to meet with doctors, in person and virtually from all over Ukraine. The pleas from these doctors and the
people at the health ministry were just so desperate.”
The day before they left for Ukraine, Russian shells had targeted a Mariupol maternity hospital.
Dr Allin-Khan said: “Nothing was off limits. It’s savage.
"The feeling was of pure panic that hospital healthcare facilities, and doctors and nurses, were going to be targeted. The method of siege, starvation – and the big fear was that ultimately there would be chemical weapon use.”
As well as those wanting guidance on “the right kind of tourniquet to use in the field”, she said the professionals they were training ranged from psychiatrists dealing with trauma to family doctors wanting to know what to do “when children come in choking to death”.
Other insights came directly from experience in other war zones, such as moving patients from a hospital’s top floors down to the relative safety in the basement, and where best to put sandbags.
Just a couple of days later, she revealed, some of those she had been training were among hundreds taken hostage by Russian troops in another hospital in Mariupol.
Dr Allin-Khan said: “It was harrowing to hear their fears, and what they were seeing on the ground.
"It was evident the Syrian playbook was being used.”
She said she had become a humanitarian doctor as she “wanted to give a voice to the voiceless” – and that what she had seen in Ukraine will stay with her for a long time.
Dr Allin-Khan added: “It’s a privilege to have a platform where I can share the experiences of families who’ve gone through unimaginable trauma. We did feel how surreal it was that we were going home to safety.
"We were going to be able to go home and kiss our kids. We’d left behind an entire country that was struggling. The scene I won’t forget was at the Polish border, seeing a group of people waiting to cross – and little kids holding their teddy bears.
“I’ve got two young children and I thought, ‘It could easily be them’.
"En masse, these women and children, just crossing into a new life with a teddy bear and a few belongings.”
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