Russian bombing forces child cancer patients to flee

Some are too unwell to make the perilous five-day journey

- KIM SENGUPTA IN KYIV

The last lingering sight Volodymyr had of his wife and their baby boy was through the window of a bus as it was about to be driven away in a convoy from Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital.

“That’s my son Mark, I’ll miss him very much, he’s not very well, and I worry about him. But I hope to see him again soon and I hope to see his mother again soon, I’ll miss her too,” said Volodymyr as he and his wife touched fingers through the glass. “We are not the only ones I know going through this, it’s a very sad situation for a lot of people.”

The line of a dozen yellow buses were taking young patients, suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses, from the children’s hospital in Kyiv – the largest in Ukraine – to Lviv, and, for many of them, onward to Germany.

It will be a journey by road and train which is likely to take up to five days with the very real possibility of disruptions due to the conflict. It would be an arduous trip for most adults, let alone for children – the youngest 13 months old – with fragile health.

But the doctors at Okhmatdyt have decided that the risk had to be taken because some of the patients simply would not survive the missile strikes and artillery rounds taking place regularly on the Ukrainian capital.