One building is crushed, the facade of another is ripped open and between them lie mounds of rubble, twisted metal and a mangled car, but work at Ukraine’s biggest children’s hospital has not stopped since a deadly Russian missile attack last Monday.
Volunteers are clearing debris and delivering supplies to Ohmatdyt, as engineers assess the damage and discuss reconstruction, and medics try to salvage equipment, relaunch services and treat those patients who were not evacuated after the attack.
A cabinet fell on Oleh Godik, the head of the hospital’s transplant team, shielding him from flying glass and other debris in his office on the eighth floor.
“I realised I wasn’t injured and went down to the ground-floor emergency department to start organising my team and treating patients coming from the destroyed building and the side of the main building that was damaged,” says Godik.
“We arranged medical help for them and began transferring patients by ambulance to other hospitals around the city,” he recalls.
“But some of our children have stayed here the whole time. There are children who have had liver transplants, who we first took down to the bomb shelter in the basement and then moved to our paediatric ward. The more critical patients were taken to other hospitals, but the stable ones stayed here.”
Godik escaped with only a nick to the forehead, but a kidney specialist on his team was killed and another doctor suffered a bad head injury.
A patient’s parent was also killed and two children who had been in a serious condition before the attack died later at another hospital. More than 20 people were also wounded at Ohmatdyt, where about 670 children were being treated and 1,000 staff were working when it was hit by a missile carrying some 400kg of explosives.
Missile attacks on several sites in Kyiv – including another medical clinic and an apartment block – and the eastern cities of Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih and Pokrovsk killed more than 40 people and injured about 200 last Monday, making it one of the deadliest recent days for civilians in Russia’s full-scale war on its pro-western neighbour.
“Despite everything, the emergency department is already working and some others are partially working. In a few days we hope to restart transplant support to outpatients and in two or three weeks I think we’ll restart surgery,” Godik says. Over the weekend, 50 young cancer patients returned to Ohmatdyt to resume treatment.
It is blazing sunshine and 35 degrees outside but gloomy in rooms where, by the light seeping in around boards nailed up over shattered windows, Oleksandr Mukhopad surveys expensive medical equipment that he doubts can be repaired.
“We can’t take any patients here now. Everything is damaged,” says Mukhopad, who introduces himself as the head of “whatever is left of” the trauma centre at Ohmatdyt, which is similar to an accident and emergency department.
“The whole team was here in the building when the missile hit,” he says, pulling back a curtain to reveal an alcove with a couch where staff took breaks.
“People were drinking tea here a few moments before the strike. We heard some smaller explosions, probably air defences firing, and I told everyone to go to a corridor between two walls, which give more protection. We felt the blast wave and some debris fell on us but no one was badly injured.”
The scale of visible destruction is daunting, and engineers are now assessing the extent of deep structural damage to the complex in central Kyiv. Officials say that at least two hospital buildings will have to be demolished but staff are adamant that Ohmatdyt will be rebuilt, refitted and fully operational again as soon as possible.
“We will definitely fix everything – we have no choice,” says Mukhopad, who has worked here for 35 years. “Our trauma centre alone used to be visited by 22,000 patients a year in peace time.”
About 20,000 children were treated each year as in-patients and more than 10,000 operations were performed annually at Ohmatdyt, whose name is an abbreviation of the Ukrainian for “Protection of motherhood and childhood”.
Founded in 1894, Ohmatdyt survived the battles for Kyiv during the second World War and has continued to develop since Ukraine became independent in 1991, opening two new buildings in 2017 and 2020 that were damaged in last week’s attack.
The hospital has long been Ukraine’s leading centre for treatment of children with cancer and other serious illnesses, and since the start of the Kremlin’s all-out invasion in February 2022, it has also cared for many children who have lost limbs, eyes or suffered burns and other severe injuries in Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes.
“Of course, the full-scale war certainly increased our workload. We studied advanced trauma life support and opened an emergency department here on those principles, because we were just 23km from the front line when it began,” Godik says, recalling Russia’s occupation of Kyiv suburbs such as Bucha in March 2022.
“Basically, all the doctors, surgeons, nurses and intensive care staff stayed in the hospital for about 70 days then without leaving.”
Ukrainians immediately started raising money last week to help repair Ohmatdyt, and officials say that about €18 million in donations has been pledged by individuals and organisations. While the air raid alert was still in effect last Monday, volunteers began rushing to the hospital to join rescue efforts.
“The first rocket woke me up that morning. I live quite close by, so I was here 20 minutes after the strike,” says Fateh (21), a Kyiv student clearing rubble, sweeping away debris and moving supplies around the dusty bomb site during a searing heatwave.
Yuliya Dyomina, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee, broke into her summer holiday in her homeland to come to the hospital and volunteer: “I just want to help by doing something,” she says. “I can clean or do whatever else they need me to do.”
Viktoriia, an orderly who was on the sixth floor when the missile hit, says the staff felt huge support from volunteers and people who had donated to help the hospital.
“I don’t know what we would have done without all the volunteers who came to help. It seemed like there were more volunteers here than staff. I’m so grateful to them,” she adds.
“We will keep going, for sure. Who will do it if not us? Some people have been working here for 20, 30 or 40 years – this is like their second home. So we’ll repair everything and carry on.”
Junior nurse Natasha and orderly Lena took a break in the shade as they carried equipment out of the ear, nose and throat department, which only moved into a newly renovated building this year.
“The head of department was operating on a child when the missile landed. A few windows in the ward are still intact but basically all the equipment and everything else was damaged or destroyed,” Lena says.
“We only started working in this building in February and everything was repaired and new. We worked in a paradise for about four months and now it’s all been ruined. It just rips your soul apart.”
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here
