Halyna’s daughter Sofiia was born with short bowel syndrome and oesophageal atresia, a rare birth defect that prevents a baby from digesting food because their oesophagus has not formed properly. By the time she was 4 months old, she had already had multiple operations in Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, the only specialist centre in Ukraine able to treat her complex conditions.
On 8 July 2024, the hospital was badly damaged in an air strike.
“Fear, horror, all the terrible emotions that one can feel, you feel at that moment,” says Halyna. “Especially if you have a small sick child in your arms, it is very hard and scary. You stand and cry, and you don’t know what to do, where to run with this child. What’s more, Sofiia was on oxygen support at the time. It was very hard.”
All the operating rooms were destroyed, there was no light, no water and no possibility of providing Sofiia and other sick children the care they so urgently needed.
Quickly, the medical evacuation programme stepped in to coordinate the transfer of 12 of the sickest children to hospitals elsewhere in Europe to continue their treatment. Since 2022, the programme, run by the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, with technical support from WHO and co-funded by the European Union and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, has transported over 5000 patients abroad for specialist medical care, helping to relieve some of the pressures on the Ukrainian health system caused by the war. The programme connects Ukrainian patients with specialist trauma and cancer treatment, rehabilitation and prosthetic care in hospitals and rehabilitation centres across the WHO European Region and beyond.
A life in the balance
Sofiia and her mother had to stay in underground shelters after the attack, and unfortunately the baby girl developed pneumonia prior to her medical evacuation. She had to be intubated and sedated for the gruelling, more-than-24-hour journey, which began on 17 July. First a convoy of ambulance-buses took the children and their caregivers from Kyiv to Lviv in western Ukraine, then over the border to Rzeszów in Poland, from where a Norwegian aircraft flew the children to various locations in Germany to receive care. The flight, especially equipped for medical evacuations, was provided by the Government of Norway and co-funded by the European Union. The pilot flew at low altitude so as not to put pressure on Sofiia’s fragile lungs. It was touch and go.
“Her condition was indeed serious,” says Halyna, recalling the day. “On the one hand, I was extremely worried, as I was told she might not survive the journey, but on the other hand, I was happy that there was a chance to save her.”
Thankfully, Sofiia was successfully transferred to the care of Stuttgart’s Olga Hospital, where she has gone on to receive several operations.
The future is looking optimistic for Sofiia, now 10 months old. She is able to play with toys, rolls over and her smile reveals 2 brand new teeth. In a few weeks, she is due to be discharged from hospital, and all being well, will be able to return to Ukraine.
“I want to say a very big thank you, but there aren’t enough words, because the medevac programme literally saved my child’s life. I am very thankful to the entire clinic in Stuttgart, Germany, to the whole team of this clinic, and to the entire team that helped to organize my child’s evacuation,” she says. “Just gratitude, gratitude for a lifetime, for saving my child’s life.”
WHO/Europe’s medevac project (currently funded until mid-2025) supports the Ministry of Health’s Medevac Coordination Unit in leading and managing the coordination of all evacuations and ensuring the safe return of patients to the national health-care system after ending their treatment phase abroad.
* This article was amended on 07 February 2025 to include reference to the important contribution of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health to the medevac programme