London ambulances on their journey to Ukraine
(Picture: handout)London Ambulance staff returning from donating 10 ambulances to Ukraine have told of the desperate need for more aid and trained medics to help refugees fleeing the war.
A team of 26 LAS volunteers drove the ambulances, which had recently been decommissioned under a “green” upgrade of the capital’s fleet, 1,200 miles to Przemysl in south-eastern Poland to enable them to be handed over to Ukrainian paramedics.
The initiative was inspired by LAS paramedic Eva Bartoskova after learning how her aunt in the Czech Republic had taken in Ukrainian refugees.
Ms Bartoskova and five colleagues from LAS’s hazardous area response team decided to remain in the Polish city of Lublin, camping for several days, to volunteer at refugee centres.
Witnessing the flood of women and children and the scale of need, they went shopping and bought large supplies of basic medicines, towels and blankets.
“We are seeing the reality [of war], which has made us feel very emotional,” Ms Bartoskova told the Standard. “It’s making us feel the journey was worth every mile. I’m so glad that we did it and that we stayed to help.”
Thursday morning a bus with 60 people arrived at one of two refugee centres in Lublin. The previous evening 20 people arrived. Ms Bartoskova, senior sector clinical lead at LAS, said: “They are running out of donations and supplies.
“Lots of the [local] volunteers are just students. They are doing absolutely amazing work.
“People are sleeping together in big sports halls with no privacy at all. Some have very small babies. There are adults, children, cats and dogs.
“They are so in need of medical help. One of the refugee centres has had an outbreak of diarrhoea. The sanitary conditions are not great.”
She said that despite aid donations from countries such as the UK, which has given more than five million medical items, “It’s not enough”.
She added: “I wish I could stay a lot longer and I wish more people did the same as us and there were more medical volunteers.
“I think it’s so important that people know that more help is needed and more volunteers are needed and more medical volunteers are needed.”
The refurbished ambulances were loaded with supplies, donated by hospitals across London - including ventilators, syringe pumps, tourniquets, wound dressings, blizzard blankets and personal protective equipment.
One of the team’s support vehicles broke down in Germany. Some 1.5 tonnes of medical supplies had to be transferred to a replacement van, delaying their arrival by a day.
Ms Bartoskova praised the “amazing team spirit”, including colleagues in London who organised the logistics of the rescue mission. She and fellow LAS Unison members had planned an aid trip before learning of plans for an official LAS mission, and their efforts were pooled.
“It was just fuelled by the spirit of humanity - to have so many people give up their time to do something like that,” she said.
More than 300 LAS staff initially volunteered to drive the ambulances to Poland in their own time.
Charlotte Coutts, an operational delivery manager at LAS’s Waterloo headquarters, who was one of the 26 selected to make the trip, said the ambulances were “welcomed with open arms” by Ukraine.
She said: “We were in contact with the Ukrainian ambulance service and they said they would more than happily take them because they are in great need, to assist with injured people and to get patients and children out.
“We are all in this profession because we care and we want to help. If we had 300 ambulances to give, we would have enough volunteers to drive them over there.
“I felt very humble to have been selected and have been part of it. As a mother myself - I have got four children – seeing everything that has happened in Ukraine, you can’t imagine what children and families are going through. I wish I could do more.”
