Utah
Utah man in Ukraine helps set up ambulance service in war-torn areas
Jim Hickman helps a company set up a much-needed service within the hardest hit areas of Ukraine, retaining civilians and troopers related to medical care. (Jim Hickman)
Estimated learn time: 3-4 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man helps a company set up a much-needed service within the hardest-hit areas of Ukraine, retaining civilians and troopers related to medical care.
Jim Hickman left dwelling in Salt Lake Metropolis and headed to Poland after the warfare broke out, spending two weeks on the border, then diving deep contained in the war-torn nation.
He is centered on organising an ambulance service as a volunteer program coordinator for the small, New Mexico-based NGO International Outreach Docs.
“Ukrainians do not have a paramedic service something like now we have in America,” Hickman defined. “And so, we have been figuring out areas in Ukraine the place they are often of use, making an attempt to rent employees. For now, we have been utilizing British and American paramedics.”
International Outreach Docs, which Hickman mentioned provides medical-focused humanitarian assist to international locations experiencing catastrophe, acquired 11 ambulances from the UK and Khaled El Mayet.
In response to the group, a International Outreach Docs medical staff is working in southern Ukraine close to Mariupol at a trauma stabilization level for the severely wounded, working with round 40 sufferers a day.
The group mentioned it’s also offering well being care close to Kyiv, with a second International Outreach Docs medic staff.
Hickman is a part of the Kyiv staff and described how he coordinates the place ambulances must go to achieve individuals who want medical care.
A lot of the time, meaning heading into what Hickman known as the “inexperienced zone,” close to the entrance traces, he mentioned, “the place we gather each civilian and army sufferers and take them to the hospitals.”
Along with medical evacuations from close to the entrance traces, Hickman indicated that the paramedics and ambulances conduct medical evaluations by visiting communities utterly minimize off from medical care due to the bombings.
“We’re doing assessments. We’re asking folks, ‘Hey, do you want your drugs refilled?’” he defined. “A few of the outlying areas, docs haven’t returned, pharmacies are usually not open.”
He mentioned somebody could also be out of blood stress remedy, or thyroid medication, or they might have a minor an infection that must be handled with no different solution to get it taken care of.
A part of Hickman’s work takes him to many alternative areas round Kyiv. He is seen bridges annihilated, and buildings left in shambles.
But, the folks of Ukraine forge ahead.
“It is sort of surreal,” he mentioned. “There’s destruction, however life continues to be occurring.”
He excursions hospitals and medical amenities to evaluate the destruction, meet with hospital officers, and discover out what they want.
International Outreach Docs mentioned it has $300,000 in monetary assist to ship to pick Ukrainian hospitals, due to a “beneficiant grantor.”
Hickman will get to ship these grants and set up relationships with space hospitals.
One of many locations he visited that Hickman will always remember, is a kids’s hospital in Chernihiv.
He took photographs of the home windows utterly lined inside, and sandbags stacked up within the windowsills. One in every of his movies reveals a darkish, damp basement with little gentle.
Within the video, a translator tells Hickman that the hospital official is explaining how the kids lived within the basement, sleeping and consuming whereas being cared for by docs and nurses who did not depart their sides for greater than a month.
“The youngsters have been taken all the way down to the basement, and that is the place they stayed for 38 days whereas they have been underneath siege,” he mentioned. No employees members left throughout these 38 days, he was instructed, and the hospital misplaced no kids.
The basement partitions are lined with shiny drawings and photos the youngsters created throughout that point.
One other video from Hickman reveals drawings of Ukrainian flags, flowers, hearts, animals and Santa Claus.
One image is of a Ukrainian flag surrounded by hearts, with the phrase “LOVE” written in crayon beneath. One other is a huge coronary heart in Ukrainian colours — shiny blue on prime, and yellow on the underside.
For Hickman, it is an inspiring image of the spirit and resilience of the Ukrainian folks.
“Even when I am having a nasty day or I am drained as all of us get, you will meet somebody and it is like, my goodness why do not you need to assist these folks, ?” he mentioned. “It simply spurs you to proceed working.”