Around 20 Ukrainian children with cancer will be specially chartered to be sent to the UK for treatment in the coming days.
Visas for at least 20 patients are being fast-tracked after the health secretary signed off on plans to come to the UK for life-saving care. Sajid Javido on Wednesday.
Officials in the UK and Ukraine are now working to sort out visa applications for children and their families before they can be evacuated. Sunday Reported.
Reports emerged hours after babies were ‘directly hit’ by a Russian rocket from a maternity hospital in Mariupol Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky, who was buried under the rubble in an attack, has called it “atrocities”.
A health source said: ‘We plan to urgently move several children and their families to the UK where they will be cared for and receive NHS treatment for their conditions.’
It comes a day after Mr Javid announced a sixth shipment of medical supplies and equipment leaving for Ukraine at 7 a.m. on Tuesday – the most of any other country at this point.
Around 20 Ukrainian children with cancer will be specially chartered to be sent to the UK for treatment in the coming days
Visas for at least 20 patients are being fast-tracked after Health Secretary Sajid Javid signed off on plans to come to the UK for life-saving care on Wednesday.
The news comes hours after a maternity hospital in Mariupol was destroyed in a ‘direct hit’ by Russian rockets, leaving babies buried under rubble in an attack that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called ‘torture’. has been described.
Mr Javid, speaking at the Royal College of Physicians in London on Tuesday, also revealed that the government is ‘considering options’ to provide acute life-saving care to refugees, especially children.
He said: ‘Today at 7 a.m., our sixth flight took off and I think, from what we’ve been told, we’ve done more in terms of medical supplies, medical equipment than any other country at the moment and of course As a matter of fact, we will continue to do what we can and will help that way.
‘For people who may need emergency health care, we’re looking at what we can do with our partners in the border countries, maybe provide medical aid on the ground in Poland or Moldova because that’s going to happen most often Big difference. Compared to someone trying to fly a thousand miles.
‘But where serious lifesaving care is needed, I don’t want to say too much at this point, but we are looking at options, working again with our European partners and our partners who work with the Foreign Office on this are doing. are doing. And let’s see what we can do.
‘And we will absolutely play our part in this, especially when it comes to children.’
The speech came a day before footage of a Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol showed badly injured patients and nurses being pulled from damaged buildings while pregnant women were carried on stretchers to a rubble-covered courtyard And it was littered with big potholes.
Zelensky himself posted a video showing the badly damaged hospital buildings, filmed inside a destroyed ward room, with windows blown out and the roof partially collapsed. More footage showed a car park covered with rubble and smoldering in vehicle debris as injured families staggered into the frozen air as snow fell.
Direct strike of Russian soldiers on the maternity hospital. People, children are buried under the rubble. Atrocity! For how long will the world ignore terror, friend? The sky is silent now! Stop the killings! You have the strength but you seem to be losing humanity.
A woman wounded in Russian shelling stands outside wrapped in a blanket amid the massacre at Mariupol maternity hospital
A maternity hospital in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol has suffered ‘heavy’ damage after a ‘direct hit’ by Russian rocket artillery, leaving children buried under rubble (pictured, a badly damaged room in the hospital)
Ukrainian emergency workers and volunteers injure a pregnant woman in a gunfight at a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022.
This is not the first time Russian airstrikes have targeted hospitals. Fighting with Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2016, Putin’s generals were accused of ‘deliberately and systematically’ blowing up hospitals as a way to undermine the city of Aleppo before a ground attack.
Observers have suggested that Russia is now using a Syria-style war plan against Ukraine after its initial precision strikes failed.
The Ukrainian Healthcare Center, a think-tank based in the country, says that between February 24 and today’s fighting, its team registered 42 cases of intentionally attacking Russian military health facilities or medics to provoke a “humanitarian crisis”. . Documented. ,
Hospitals in every theater were affected, the think-tank said, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhya and Mykolaiv.
‘Humanitarian devastation is a part of Russia’s hybrid war. [It] The intention is to spread panic, create an influx of refugees across borders and force the Ukrainian government to surrender, said think-tank co-founder Pavlo Kovtonyuk.
During the armistice, Mariupol was bombed so that civilians could be evacuated. This is the fourth time the so-called “humanitarian corridor” outside the city has failed as Russian forces have opened fire.