Ukraine - Humanitarian medical aid in a war-torn country
This is the seventh time since 2010 that doctors from Oberursel and Frankfurt have set off on a medical mission to Lviv in Ukraine. Over the years, a humanitarian aid program has been established with the local clinic for severely burned and injured children under the direction of chief physician Dr. Wasilij Savchin. Thanks to the generous support of proInterplast Seligenstadt e.V., BigShoe e.V. Wangen/Allgäu and FC Bayern Munich, over 150 children have already been operated on. These operations could not be carried out there until now, as the socially disadvantaged families are denied medical treatment for financial reasons alone and there are no specialists available for complicated plastic surgery operations.
Dr. Bianca Baican and Privatdozent Dr. Klaus Exner, together with Dr. Savchin and a small group of socially committed doctors, have once again provided medical care to many families from the poorest classes in the country on the border of Europe, despite the difficult circumstances in an urban hospital.
We went straight from the airport to the hospital, where 45 families and their children were waiting for the team. Until late in the evening, all the patients were examined, the parents were advised and the surgical program for the following days was prepared. Everything had to be translated and explained by interpreters, and anesthetists checked the children's fitness for anesthesia.
The children suffer from the consequences of severe burns, other accidents or congenital malformations. There were also many young patients who can only open their eyes a slit due to a lack of eyelid muscles. Some patients came back for a follow-up examination to show the results.
Dr. Baican is one of the few plastic surgeons who have mastered the difficult operation of forming ears from the children's own rib cartilage. That is why the colleagues in the Ukraine had also brought 7 children with missing or severely malformed auricles for treatment.
In the days that followed, we helped 17 children with plastic surgery, giving them and their families quality of life and hope. All operations and anesthesia went without complications, even a difficult procedure that lasted seven hours.
We were particularly pleased by the great interest shown by 35 colleagues who traveled from all over Ukraine to attend a master class course to learn the surgical technique of ear reconstruction.
Of course, we were not able to help all the children on this mission and will therefore be traveling to Ukraine again soon. We hope that many voluntary donors will support this valuable work.
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