Aged a few months and up to 15 years old, these little Ukrainians are suffering from serious illnesses. Arrived in France on Monday, they were distributed in different hospitals. We met Dmitro, 6, and his family.
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Ludmilla holds between her fingers a map of France with the departments. The Ukrainian grandmother surrounded the Puy-de-Dôme: it is now in Clermont-Ferrand that Dmitro, 6, her grandson will be treated. The boy is a little tired, Monday March 21, on the tarmac of Orly airport (Val-de-Marne) after his four days of wandering between Tcheniguiv, surrounded and bombarded by the Russian army, 150 km of kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and the Poland he has just left.
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Like Dmitro, 20 sick children between the ages of a few months and up to fifteen years old were repatriated from Ukraine to continue their treatment in France under more normal conditions. Suffering from serious pathologies such as cancer or leukemia, they were dispatched to various Parisian hospitals such as the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif, or to other regions.
It’s Dmitro’s mom, Oksana, who says she’s relieved to be almost at the end of the road: “I am delighted to have arrived in France and to be able to access medical treatment for my child.”
“In the ruins of the hospitals, the doctors try to help the children and the other civilians. My father and my brother stayed there. They are in an area occupied by the Russians. They cannot get out of there. .”
Oksana, mother of a sick child repatriated to Franceat franceinfo
Present at Orly airport, the Ukrainian ambassador to France evokes the figure of 150 hospitals bombed since the beginning of the war. He thanks the French authorities but adds that there are still sick children to get out of there, not to mention the injured children and the orphans.