A Highland doctor will spend his birthday travelling to Ukraine to help hospitals under attack from Russian forces.
Andy Kent, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, first went to Ukraine in March as a volunteer with frontline aid charity UK-Med.
He will return to the war-hit country tomorrow to offer more medical support, which has recently increased thanks to £600,00 of funding from the UK government.
Half of the funding will help train Ukrainian doctors, nurses and paramedics to deal with mass casualties, while the other half will provide six weeks worth of medical supplies.
The former solider, who is turning 58, said: “I’ve spent more than a few birthdays on weird and wonderful deployments overseas, including one in Mosul, Iraq. For some reason May 2 seems to always clash with me being away. I was in Eswatini last year.
“My wife Jill and I arranged to visit Edinburgh for the weekend to celebrate my birthday before she drops me off at the airport and off I go.”
‘The sheer volume blew me away’
More than 130 attacks on healthcare facilities have taken place since the invasion, while more than 100 fire stations and 250 fire engines have been destroyed.
The UN has recorded around 4,800 civilian casualties.
Mr Kent has played a key role in delivering UK-Med support and helping to assess the country’s needs.
He said: “In the four weeks I was there, I don’t think there was a night you weren’t woken up by air raid sirens going off.
“It was only really when we got further east to places like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia that we began to encounter hospitals full of casualties – both civilian and military.
“I’ve seen a lot of war injuries in my career, so I’m used to seeing acute amputations, serious head injuries and chest drains and all that, but it was the sheer volume of it that really blew me away.”
The Inverness-based surgeon said “reality really starts to hit” for those injured once they leave the hospital, and he hopes UK-Med will be able to help with rehabilitation in the future.
He said: “The surgeons are as experienced, if not more, than UK surgeons in dealing with gunshot and blast injuries because they’ve been dealing with casualties from the Donbas for over 10 years.
“They are doing tremendous work and the big challenge for them is evacuating patients to free up beds once they’ve been stabilised. Many hospitals are facing choke points.
“We’ve identified a need to help physically get stabilised patients with multiple limb amputations or those being ventilated out of those frontline hospitals.”
He added that he has been stunned by how grateful the Ukrainians are to have had the support of the UK.
Vital funding for Ukraine
Med-UK has recently received £600,000 of funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to provide humanitarian support in Ukraine.
Mr Kent said: “There is absolutely no doubt that this UK government funding will enable us to reach those in Ukraine who most need support.
“We’re proud to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and medical colleagues in this desperate time.”
As well as new funding for Ukrainian doctors dealing with mass casualties, the UK is supplying 22 new fully-equipped ambulances and more than 40 fire engines.
This will be the largest fire deployment to ever leave the UK.
Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said: “The Kremlin continues to lie about deliberate attacks on Ukraine’s hospitals and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians.
“Now our vital humanitarian support will help save lives and deliver medical expertise to the frontline.”
