A heroic MP has told how she went to Ukraine to train doctors in war zone medicine – and ended up coming to the aid of a fleeing family whose cars were shot up by a Russian armoured vehicle.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour MP for Tooting, went to Lviv with NGO MedGlobal as they delivered 170 crates of urgent supplies.
Her eighth humanitarian trip since becoming an MP in 2016, the main mission was to train 250 doctors from across the country in treating civilians caught in the Russian attack.
But as she and her team were leaving, they learned of a family – including 12-year-old Tomofei Prusakova and his cousin Yelisey Soboleva, 10 – desperate for specialist treatment after suffering horrific bullet and shrapnel wounds a week earlier.
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Rosena said soldiers had fired a rocket at their cars then “opened fire on them as they screamed for them to stop”.
The boys’ grandmother had died in the attack. Rosena added: “She had multiple wounds, she’d been shot in her liver. She’d have bled out tragically in a very agonising death.”
Rosena, who also worked as an A&E doctor on the Covid front line in the UK, said: “Because my expertise for the last 14 years has been humanitarian medicine, I specialise in that sort of work in war zones and disaster settings.
“Our key focus was to meet with doctors, in person and virtually, from all over Ukraine. The pleas from these doctors and the people at the health ministry were desperate.”
The day before they left for Ukraine, Russian shells had targeted a Mariupol maternity hospital.
Rosena said: “Nothing was off-limits. It’s savage.
“The feeling was of pure panic – that hospital healthcare facilities, and doctors and nurses, were going to be targeted. And the big fear that ultimately there would be chemical weapon use.”
As well as those wanting guidance “on the right kind of tourniquet to use in the field”, she said those they trained ranged from psychiatrists dealing with trauma to family doctors wanting to know what to do “when the children come in choking to death”.
Other insights came directly from war zone experience, such as moving patients from a hospital’s top floors down to the relative safety of the basement, and where best to put sandbags.
Just a couple of days later, some of those she had taught were among hundreds taken hostage by Russian troops in another hospital in Mariupol.
She said: “It was harrowing. It was evident the Syrian playbook was being used.”
Rosena became a humanitarian doctor “to give a voice to the voiceless”.
She said: “It’s a privilege to have a platform to share the experiences of those who’ve gone through unimaginable trauma.
“The scene I won’t forget was at the Polish border – and little kids holding their teddy bears.
“I’ve got two young children and I thought, ‘It could easily be them’. En masse, these women and children, just crossing into a new life with a teddy bear and a few belongings.”
