New York/Kyiv, July 8, 2024—In one of the largest missile attacks on Ukraine, the country’s largest children’s hospital, Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital, was hit today, resulting in deaths and injuries.
Children with serious medical conditions, some requiring critical life support, are waiting for evacuation or re-hospitalization in other parts of Okhmatdyt Children's Hospital near the destroyed building in Kyiv, according to the Minister of Health of Ukraine. The children's dialysis department was particularly damaged.
"Increasingly, our teams are witnessing attacks on civilian and medical infrastructure by the Russian forces across Ukraine, on front-line towns and villages and deeper in the country,” said Christopher Stokes, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières(MSF) in Ukraine. “Hospitals are being destroyed and patients and medical staff are being killed. The Okhmatdyt Hospital in Kyiv, which was attacked today, is known to our teams. At the beginning of the full-scale war, our doctors assisted medical staff in the surgical wards and provided training for physical therapists. It is unacceptable that patients cannot feel safe and receive treatment within the walls of a hospital."
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine reports that the missile strike on Okhmatdyt hospital killed two adults and wounded 16 people, including seven children. Rescuers and volunteers are urgently working to reach the basement of the hospital building, which collapsed due to the missile impact, as children and medical personnel were sheltering there during the alarm.
An MSF team visited the hospital today to assess the situation and offer assistance if necessary.
MSF responds to requests from the Ministry of Health, and we support hospitals near the front line and departments of medical institutions where early physical rehabilitation is provided to patients with war injuries. Our teams continue to assist medical facilities with the evacuation of patients between hospitals and cities by MSF ambulances.
How MSF is helping in Ukraine
When full-scale war erupted in Ukraine in 2022, MSF scaled up activities to meet the many health needs—supporting health facilities, running mobile clinics, and operating a specially designed medical train, taking patients from overburdened Ukrainian hospitals close to active war zones to Ukrainian hospitals with more capacity that are farther from the front lines.
Our teams also provide mental health care in 10 different locations outside Kyiv. In 2022, these teams provided almost 1,000 individual mental health consultations, and 184 group therapy sessions.
