“The idea of this activity is to support the hospitals that are closer to the front line, to empty some bed capacity so they can receive more patients from the attacks, the conflict, but also other chronic patients,” Kamaledin said.
In wheelchairs and on stretchers, in ambulances and on train station platforms, they wait. Medical workers pull out ramps and wheel the patients onto the specially equipped train that will carry them westwards, away from the fighting raging in eastern Ukraine, reports AP.
Run by the aid organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), the train is a lifeline for the overwhelmed hospitals in cities and towns near Ukraine’s front lines that are struggling to cope with an influx of war wounded on top of their usual flow of sick patients.
“Since the beginning of the war, the hospital capacity in the east is under pressure,” said Yasser Kamaledin, MSF’s emergency project coordinator for the medical evacuation train, which includes an intensive care unit.
“The idea of this activity is to support the hospitals that are closer to the front line, to empty some bed capacity so they can receive more patients from the attacks, the conflict, but also other chronic patients,” Kamaledin said.
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