Children with heart defects cannot escape the war in Ukraine.
That's according to Chernobyl Children International who sent 12 cardiac surgeons to Lviv to perform life changing operations on newborns.
The team landed in Krakow and travelled to Lviv by bus and brought equipment including oxygenators that stop the flow of blood to the heart to repair congenital heart defects such as ‘Chernobyl Heart’.
Speaking to RedFM News, Adi Roche of Chernobyl Childrens International says that these children and their families have been unable to flee the war-torn country because of the deteriorating nature of their cardiac illnesses.
"This is a huge humanitarian crisis, gravely ill children caught in the crossfire of war. And if they didn't get these surgeries, these children would disappear into oblivion because they would basically die.
"There was a newborn only born on the fourth of December whose life was as we say in Irish 'ar an imeall' - on the edge - and that if they didn't get there, that baby was not going to survive, and they got in there pretty quickly along with all of the equipment and life saving medications."
