- About 20 children with cancer will be flown from Ukraine to the UK for treatment
- It comes after several hospitals in Ukraine closed following the Russian invasion
- Health Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed the plan to fly in the sick children today
- Their visas will be fast-tracked, they will be flown on a specially chartered plane
Around 20 Ukrainian children with cancer will be flown to the UK on a specially chartered for treatment in the coming days.
Visas for at least 20 patients are being fast-tracked to allow them to come to the UK for life-saving care after the scheme was signed off by Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Wednesday.
Officials in the UK and Ukraine are now working to sort the visa applications before the children and their families can be evacuated, The Sun reported.
The report emerged hours after a maternity hospital in Mariupol was decimated in a ‘direct hit’ by a Russian rocket, leaving children buried in the rubble in an attack Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky has described as an ‘atrocity.’
A health source said: ‘We are urgently making plans to evacuate a number of children and their families to the UK where they will be looked after and receive NHS treatment for their conditions.’
It comes a day after Mr Javid announced the UK’s sixth shipment of medical supplies and equipment left for Ukraine at 7am on Tuesday morning – the most ‘than any other country at this point.
Mr Javid, speaking at the Royal College of Physicians in London on Tuesday, also revealed that the Government was ‘looking at options’ to provide acute life-saving care to refugees, especially children.
He said: ‘This morning at 7 am, our sixth flight left and I think, from what we’re told, we have done more in terms of medical supplies, medical equipment than any other country at this point and of course, we will continue to do whatever we can and help in that way.
‘In terms of those who might need emergency healthcare, we are looking what we can do with our partners in the bordering countries, providing medical support in maybe Poland or Moldova on the ground because often that is what is going to make the biggest difference rather than trying to fly someone thousands of miles.
‘But where there is a need for acute life-saving care, I don’t want to say too much at this point, but we are looking at options, working again with our European partners and our partners working with the Foreign Office on this and looking at what we can do.
‘And we will absolutely be playing our part in that, especially when it comes to the children.’
The speech came a day before footage of a Russian strike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol showed badly wounded patients and nurses being evacuated from decimated buildings, while pregnant women were carried out on stretchers into a courtyard covered in rubble and littered with huge craters.
Zelensky himself posted a video showing the badly damaged hospital buildings, filmed inside a destroyed wardroom with its windows blown out and ceiling partially collapsed. More footage showed a car park covered in rubble and the smouldering wrecks of vehicles as injured families staggered into the freezing air while snow fell.
‘Direct strike of Russian troops at the maternity hospital. People, children are under the wreckage. Atrocity! How much longer will the world be an accomplice ignoring terror? Close the sky right now! Stop the killings! You have power but you seem to be losing humanity,’ the President tweeted.
It is not the first time that Russian airstrikes have targeted hospitals. While fighting alongside Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2016, Putin’s generals were accused of ‘deliberately and systematically’ blowing up hospitals as a way of weakening the city of Aleppo ahead of a ground assault
Observers have suggested that Russia is now using a Syria-style battle plan against Ukraine after its early precision strikes failed.
The Ukrainian Healthcare Center, a think-tank based in the country, says that between the outbreak of fighting on February 24 and today, their team documented 42 cases of Russian forces attacking either healthcare facilities or medics in order to deliberately provoke a ‘humanitarian crisis’.
Hospitals had been struck in every theatre where Russian forces were operating, the think-tank said, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv.
‘The humanitarian catastrophe is a part of Russia’s hybrid war. [It] intends to spread panic, create a flow of refugees at the borders and force the Ukrainian government to surrender,’ said Pavlo Kovtonyuk, co-founder of the think-tank.
The bombing took place during what was supposed to be a ceasefire in Mariupol so that civilians could evacuate. It marks the fourth time a so-called ‘humanitarian corridor’ out of the city has failed because Russian forces opened fire.
Daily Mail UK
