“There is a whole procedure, a know-how, if only in triage and the general organization of the hospital”, explains Friday April 1 on franceinfo Raphaël Pitti, anesthesiologist-resuscitator, who leaves Wednesday April 6 for Ukraine to open a training center for war medicine in Lviv. Ukrainians “were not prepared for this situation and it is very important to train them”indicates this specialist in emergency medicine in war zones, also responsible for training at the Union of relief organizations and medical care.
franceinfo: You are leaving for Ukraine next week with the aim of opening a training center there for Ukrainian doctors. What will they learn there?
Raphael Pitti: Civilian medical personnel live in a very special situation since the war takes place in the cities and they are directly impacted. They have to deal with influxes of wounded and they don’t know how to sort. They have to deal with pathologies for which they are poorly prepared. There is a whole procedure, a know-how, if only in the triage and the general organization of the hospital in the face of situations of this nature. Our Ukrainian colleagues, like the Syrians for that matter, were not prepared for this situation and it was very important to train them. This is what we did in Syria and this is what we will try to do in Lviv.
The specificity of war medicine is that the first minutes are even more essential to survival?
Absolutely, it is in particular on the ground that everything will be played out, in the first hour when 50% of the victims will die of asphyxiation or haemorrhage. The training of first aiders is therefore really very important in what is called the recovery of victims and their transport to hospital structures, with procedures that are also called pre-hospital damage control.
Do you know what awaits you there and under what conditions doctors work today?
As far as kyiv, Lviv and the majority of cities are concerned, there are sporadic bombings of civilians, but this impacts them in a different way than in Mariupol, which is experiencing a dramatic situation, as was the case in Aleppo. . I cannot fail to make the connection with what the Syrians have experienced over the past decade. It’s really the same thing, a terrible situation, they are locked up in cellars, the population has trouble getting treatment. With their bombardments, the Russians destroy the supply of electricity, drinking water and they prevent the food supply and the evacuation of the victims.