Page 32 - Chiron Calling Autumn/Winter 2022

Medical Support to Ukraine
by Tom Ogilvie-Graham
My Army experience
in helping to provide humanitarian medical support (for example, in Kenya
on Exercise SHARPOINT, with 5 Airborne Brigade at the tail-end of the 1994 genocide, in Kuwait during the Gulf War as well as in Bosnia) has proved useful in organising
and delivering support to Ukraine in recent months. That said, the experience I’ve gained since leaving the Army has also not done any harm as it has included running
an ophthalmic hospital group in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza as well as wider conservation work across Sub Saharan Africa and, more recently, running a European medical foundation. Most of all, however, it is the hands-on and results-orientated attitude that we all tend to develop in the Army, not least in the RAVC, that is one of our strongest attributes in organising efforts like this, regardless of whether we are serving or retired, senior or junior and male or female.
When I saw the need in Ukraine for specialist ophthalmic surgery, especially related to ballistic eye trauma, I thought my foundation, which works with eye surgeons around the world, could do a great deal to help. Firstly, we petitioned medical industries such as Zeiss, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lombe to gift us equipment, ranging from suture material up to endoscopes and emergency
surgical machines. The response was very encouraging (over 500,000 Euros of equipment so far and all within just a few weeks) but then
we had to overcome bureaucratic hurdles such as importation red tape, getting storage places near the Ukrainian border, finding reliable people who could transport the high-value material and, most of all, ensuring the equipment and drugs reached the right hands. If we had simply donated the equipment to big charities like the Red Cross or MSF, it would probably have ended up hidden somewhere at the back
of a big warehouse filled with other medical equipment. Or it might be delivered to big general hospitals, but it would still most probably
not be getting into the hands of
the ophthalmic surgeons spread across clinics or small ophthalmic departments. Without this highly specialised equipment, they cannot operate effectively and many of their patients could go blind as a result.
We quickly set up a network
of Ukrainian eye surgeons, at consultant level, both in Ukraine
and outside, who were able to tell me exactly what was needed and where. They were also able to help in getting the supplies to clinics right across Ukraine including the main military hospital in Kiev which I visited yesterday. The Colonel in charge
is a charming and capable surgeon with 35 years of military experience, beating my service record by five
years! He has enormous experience in dealing with injuries to eyes, not least since Ukraine has actually been fighting a war in eastern Ukraine since 2014. I met a number of his patients and it is not possible to be left unmoved by the experience. Three young men, soldiers, who only a week ago were fully fit and proud to be serving in defence of their country; now only one of them is left with any sight whatsoever (in his one remaining eye) and it is desperately sad to see them each being led along the corridor by a nurse walking backwards and holding both their hands. They have gone from being active and self-contained young
men into ones utterly dependent on others and without any hope of this changing by much for the rest of their lives.
In addition, on this present visit to Ukraine, I visited a children’s hospital with an ophthalmic department in Irpin. This town, along with Bucha, also on the outskirts of Kyiv, was hammered by the Russian Army and the list of Russian atrocities there is endless. Putting aside the rapes, gratuitous killing of civilians and torture of even old people, the Russian Army targeted the children’s hospital. The hospital had been mortared and there were shallow graves in the grounds whilst the head of the hospital was threatened with being shot on seven occasions by the Russians; he did well to survive. It was a privilege to be able to hand
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