Medical aid at the Ukrainian border with Dr. Bukavina

We should probably start with, um, just introducing yourself. Tell us who you are and, and where you're coming from. Um, well, hey, everyone who's listening or watching in this case. My name is Laura Bucavina. I'm a urological oncology fellow at Fox Chase, which is in Philadelphia, and I will be coming back to Case Western, uh, to do, to be in a, a practicing urologic oncologist there, uh, next summer. I'm currently in Poland. Yeah, I think I'm currently in Poland, spending about two weeks at the border of Madika, which is at the border of Ukraine and Poland. And during the refugee crisis. Yeah, and we very much applaud the work that you've been doing there with um the refugee crisis and then also your work through MedWish. Could you um tell the folks about what MedWish is and how you got involved and, and what you guys do? Mhm. So MedWish is um in Cleveland, Ohio, which is how I sort of know about it under directorship of Doctor Ponsky, the other Doctor Ponsky, not your Ponsky, Lee Ponsky, and it's a, it's a medical recycling program, meaning that the hospitals can uh donate uh supplies that are either, uh, you know, They're not necessarily expired but close to expiration, or they have a surplus of products or things that they just want to donate for for need. So MedWish uses that sort of outreach and then is able to donate those to individuals or charities at extremely low cost um to sort of help in terms of medical supplies. So that can be anything from just bandages to medications to intubation kits to large sort of, uh, large, large machinery depending on what they have in stock. That's amazing. So, uh, I think that any of the surgical trainees or practicing surgeons on the, on the. podcast or anyone who's listening can relate to that moment when you know, you finish a case and you look at the table and there's all this leftover equipment that you didn't use, stuff you didn't even open. And you wonder what's going to happen to that. Well, it's like, well, we can't really use it again. So what, is there a way we can use to do this, you know, get some use out of this or help someone with this. And I think that it's amazing what you guys do. Um, And we will include a link to the MedWish website. If anyone wants to get more information or anything, you can scroll down under the media player, you can click on that link and you can kind of learn more about what they do or get involved or donate or whatever you guys want to do. Um, and I, it's my understanding that you guys were able to get some supplies to the border during this crisis. Is that right? I mean, what, what else have you guys been doing, um, on the ground there? Yeah, yeah, we, we brought a bunch of supplies with us, so we brought about 200 pounds of supplies, medical supplies with us, because we sort of wanted to hit the ground running because there's on average about 100,000 people that cross the border at any given day. So we brought about 200 pounds of supply with us and then the first day that we're there and then continuously through the first two weeks we get about 45 packages of medical supplies, um. On a daily basis, so there's certainly a lot of need, um, but there's also a lot of donations from people and organizations like MedWish. That's amazing. Um, and talk to me about, um, the, the coordination that you have with the teams there. I mean, um, talk to me about what, what kind of, uh, work do you see going on there every day that they, that they need, or what kind of things do you anticipate, um, you know, anyone from the States or anyone listening to this podcast, wherever they are in the world, um, that they could, that they could help. Uh, so I think a lot of people reach out to me and have been reaching out to me and I think there's this concept of sort of fear, how can I, uh, what am I gonna do? How can I really help? You know, I donated money, but what else can I do? I don't quite feel that donating money is doing enough. I wanna do more. And, and, and there's tons of things you can do. You can You can donate money. You can do fundraising. You can buy supplies and reach out to people and ask where you can send supplies directly to the hospitals, whether it's in Ukraine or at the border, which require a lot of medical supplies as well. And then there's also this fear of, well, I want to do some hands-on on the field volunteering, but I feel that I need to come with, you know, either WHO or some kind of an NGO. And because I don't know what's going on, I don't know the language. And I think that's a little bit of anxiety is OK, but I think if you just need to want to volunteer, honestly, there's people from all over the world. you know, hundreds of people that come volunteer and all they do is just show up at the border. They find a volunteer and they say, what can I do to help you? And then people just get you plugged in to help. If you have skills, whether you're a medical Whether you're a medic or you don't, you don't have any medical training, if you just wanna help sort boxes, kinda guide people where they need to go, um, set up tents, or set up warming tents, make soup, hand out anything. Like I mean, honest, honestly, anyone has any skills that could be helpful on the, on the border, you can, you can. People are extremely pleasant and everyone is working together. So if you, that's something you wanna do, then you can reach out and we can get you plugged in. That's awesome advice. And I think that, um, uh, it's advice that I hope that our listeners take to heart. And, um, you know, even if You know, a handful, one or two people are able to make it there to, like you said, even something as simple as making soup, then I would say this is all worth it, uh, to get the word out there and to sit down and talk to you and educate people about what's going on. Um, because it's just, I don't know. I, I think that, uh, when we talk about it in our meetings, it's the same thing, you know, it's a bunch of physicians, surgeons. Sitting around like feeling almost helpless. And the fact of the matter is that we're, I don't think we, we are completely. Um, so, especially when, as we're filming this, I mean, that more and more of the news comes out that like, you know, for example, as we're filming this today on a Thursday, that the news was yesterday that there were bombings of a maternity and children's hospital. And, um, I think that's enough to kind of embolden anyone and especially those who take care of these patients in maternity and pediatric hospitals. You know, around the world, it kind of hits home. It strikes a certain chord. Yeah, yeah, and does, and people are, and people are scared about going into hostile areas. People are scared, right? They have families, and you don't necessarily have to do that. You can do things that are, you know, calm. You can do things in Poland. You can provide housing to people. You can help get them situated and get their paperwork for refugee status filled out. So there's a, there's tons of roles that you can be extremely helpful in. I'm sure you know, you've seen pictures. A lot of these people are kids that are passing through. Um, so getting enough of kids' supplies, kids' medications is very important. You know, I would probably say half of the people that we see in our clinic, sort of in a medical clinic, are kids or pregnant women. So making sure that you have the resources to take care of those people. Um, and people tend to send things that are maybe less so important right now, you know, getting Clothes is fine, but these people are usually sick, malnourished, and dehydrated. So medications are really important at this time. OK, that's good to know. That's good to know. Uh, because I know that at least from everything that I see on social media and then on and stuff, it's like the weather is another thing that kind of worries me is how everyone says it is. So, but I, I feel like it's a good problem that you guys have. You guys sound like you guys have enough clothes. It sounds like you just need medical supplies more so, or yeah, and the clothes storage, I mean, I don't know if you've seen any of the pictures that I took, but the clothes storage, they don't have enough storage. So for the clothes you have, in order to keep them dry, you have to keep them in the inside, and the infrastructure and the infrastructure there is not set up. They don't have enough tents as it is, and they're not going to waste tents to store clothes if they don't have enough tents to store, to put people to keep them warm. So the, the clothes end up being piled outside and then they get snowed on and it melts because it gets a little bit warmer and it just becomes this like fungating mass of just wetness and honestly it's a waste. It really is a waste for those clothes. People need to stay warm and they need food and they need medicine. The clothes will come later, right? Clothes are a necessity later on after those other things. So if people want to donate, I would probably just donate either funds so they could set up housing for them or they want to donate, uh, medicine, especially, I, especially more medication that's less accessible to the common folks. So. What happens is a lot of people go to their nearby pharmacy and they'll buy Tylenol or cold medicine or, you know, ibuprofen, things that don't need a prescription. And we have boxes and boxes upon boxes of ibuprofen. If I have to look at another ibuprofen, I'll die. Well. But we don't have enough medications that we actually need. Like we don't have any IV antibiotic we barely have any IV antibiotics cause that's only accessible in Europe to physicians in the hospital. You cannot get it in in pharmacy. So I've been reaching out to people to get IV antibiotics shipped from all over Europe, um, even veterinarians because veterinarians have access to IV antibiotics and it's the same IV antibiotics just to get them shipped. Wow, that's good to know. Yeah, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have thought of any of that, honestly. My first thought, like you would have, like you were saying, my first thought would be like, oh, it's really easy to send over, you know, children's clothes or children's Tylenol. I can grab that on the way home from work or something and send that over. But it sounds like everybody has the same thought. So it's and it's OK. It's needed, but then we have a surplus of that and we don't have enough of it. So it's time to sort of tailor the tailor the resources to the needs of the population. Yeah, no, that's great. I think that's, that's even more so why this kind of stuff is important to sit down and talk to, to someone like you so we can learn this stuff so we know that we're more targeted with what we're, what we're doing. I, I hope that the listeners out there, you know, follow the links below in the media player, reach out to us on social media if you have any further questions. We're always happy to, to, uh, help set people up with whatever they want to do. Um. So, uh, with that, I mean, I want, I want to thank you so much for sitting down and taking a minute to talk with us. I know that you're busy and I know that you guys got a lot going on there, but I appreciate you helping us tell at least our corner of the pediatric surgery world, what's going on and how they can help. So thank you so much. And, uh, you know, I hope that we can, yeah, of course, I hope we can talk again. Hopefully about something a little bit, uh, hopefully about something a little bit less dire than the, the crisis, the ongoing crisis at the time. OK. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thank you.