Professors and experts from McGill University in Montreal have developed online training translated into Ukrainian to help healthcare workers in this war-torn country care for their injured patients.
The Center for Global Surgery of the McGill University Health Center, which shares its expertise on a global scale through partnerships with several countries, has been collaborating with Ukraine on various projects for more than 10 years. However, this mutual aid has taken a new step in the context of the war that has been going on for more than a week in this Eastern European country, where “urgent needs” in terms of health care have emerged, indicated McGill University, in a statement released Friday.
In record time, in less than 24 hours, multimedia training programs translated into Ukrainian have been set up for healthcare workers in this country, where the death toll and injuries related to the The ongoing Russian invasion continues to escalate.
“I think one of the challenges [les travailleurs de la santé ukrainiens] have at the moment is that everyone is working very hard. They have the expertise, but they don’t have enough resources right now,” explained the Homework Friday the co-director of the Center for Global Surgery, Dan Deckelbaum. However, “there are certain procedures that, if you are a family doctor or a cardiologist, you do not see every day,” added the expert, who teaches at McGill University.
Act urgently
In the last few days, Mr. Deckelbaum was contacted by Ukrainian colleagues who wanted educational materials on basic resuscitation care and lifesaving procedures for health experts who are not specialized surgeons. The center’s experts have thus created three informative videos of a few minutes explaining how to carry out certain surgical operations often necessary to ensure the survival of patients experiencing difficulty in breathing following a serious injury.
“If someone has a chest injury [après avoir été atteint par balle, par exemple]it takes a special surgery,” says Deckelbaum.
Thoracic surgeon Junko Tokuno edited these videos, which were shot in Montreal in a mock operating room. “Family doctors, they often don’t have training for surgeries. But often, in life or death situations, surgeries are needed. Our videos can show how to do this with visual and auditory support. I think it’s very useful,” she said in an interview with Homework.
Dan Deckelbaum is also sorry that the war in Ukraine, which resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians, also targeted the health sector. Several hospitals have indeed been damaged by Russian strikes in different cities of Ukraine in recent days. “Even in the context of an armed conflict, hospitals, under no circumstances, should be a target,” he lamented on Friday.