Dr. Tracey Parnell is putting out the call for financial support that will be used to purchase and ship medical equipment to Ukraine.
Her last two sojourns into Ukraine had stops in Lviv, Kyiv, and eventually, to the war’s eastern front line, spending the majority of her time with the Pirogov First Volunteer Mobile Hospital — a volunteer organization of physicians who provide care and evacuation for the wounded. “There’s trenches, there’s shelling, there’s loss of limbs like I’ve never seen,” Dr. Parnell said. “The ones who are going to die are going to die, but there’s a whole pile of people who don’t have to die and those are the ones we want to focus on making sure they get what they need to do the job.
She is hoping raise enough financial support to purchase as much of the necessary specialized medical equipment as possible. That includes 1,000 CAT tourniquets, 2,000 chest seals, specialized pressure bandages, ready heat blankets and special heated fluid pumps, stretchers and scoop stretchers. While well-intentioned people may wish to directly donate equipment, it may inadvertently not be the correct type or the quality may not be good enough, which is why the account was set up directly with the supplier, said Dr. Parnell.
Organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and Red Cross have been operating in Ukraine; however, not up near the front lines where the fighting is, according to Dr. Parnell.