As It Happens6:37Ukrainian doctors performed heart surgery on a child. Then the power went out
Doctors in Kyiv were performing open-heart surgery on a 14-year-old boy on Wednesday when the lights suddenly went out.
Russian missiles rained down on the Ukrainian capital the day the Kyiv Heart Institute unexpectedly lost light, electricity and running water.
Hospital staff swung into action, firing up a backup generator to keep the boy’s life support running. The surgeons continued to operate using only the light from their phones and headlamps.
“Everything was coordinated. Nobody panicked,” Dr. Mihail Zagrichuk, a transplant surgeon at the hospital, told As It Happens host Nil Kjoksal.
“They were able to complete this operation and fortunately this child survived and the operation was successful. But the first few seconds … it was very horrible.”
Zagrichuk had just finished a kidney transplant operation when the hospital suddenly went dark.
His patient, he says, was already out of the woods. But in the next room his colleagues were operating on the child.
Cardiac surgeon Dr. Boris Todurov filmed doctors performing surgery during the power outage.
“Surgeons operate with headlights on,” he can be heard saying in Ukrainian in the video, which the hospital posted on Facebook. “Try to finish it as quickly as possible. Now we will start the generator.”
WATCH | The doctors finish the operation after the hospital goes dark:
Surgeons perform heart surgery during a power outage in Kyiv
Doctors at the Kyiv Heart Institute were performing heart surgery on a teenage patient on Wednesday when the power went out, so they continued to work by the light of their phones and headlamps.
Todurov told the CBC that the boy was undergoing an aortic valve replacement when the power went out.
According to him, the operation was successful and the prognosis for the patient is good.
“The parents are happy. Everyone is happy,” he said.
Blackouts across Ukraine as winter sets in
The shutdown came amid heavy Russian bombing in Ukraine, which cut off electricity and running water to much of the capital and other parts of the country.
National grid operator Ukrenergo said on Friday that about 30 percent of electricity supplies were still out.
At least 21 people have been killed in Wednesday’s attacks.
People line up for water in Kyiv on Thursday. (Evgenii Maloletka/Associated Press)
Since October, Russia has openly admitted to attacking Ukraine’s civilian energy and heating systems with long-range missiles and drones.
Russia says the aim is to reduce Ukraine’s ability to fight and force it to negotiate. But Ukraine claims that strikes on infrastructure are war crimes.
This is a new reality that affects every aspect of Ukrainian life, including healthcare.
Zagrichuk says health workers had to transport organs between cities even as rockets rained down from the sky and air raid sirens urged people to seek shelter.
A Russian missile hit the maternity ward of a hospital in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing a newborn boy and critically injuring a doctor. The overnight explosion left the small town hospital a shattered mess of bricks.
Asked how he manages to continue his work under such conditions, Zagrichuk laughed.
“Do we have a choice? We have to,” he said.
“We are stronger every day and we couldn’t even imagine that this was possible. If someone [had told] A year ago, I didn’t believe it was possible, I couldn’t imagine it. But we’re still going.”
Power at the Kyiv Cardiology Institute is now back on, but Zagrichuk says it was without interruption for several hours on Wednesday.
He says friends and family members of patients and staff brought water as they worked to restore their own supplies.
“This war [taught] we get [through] problems together and help each other,” he said.
The boy, who underwent heart surgery, was one of 190 patients at the hospital during the power outage, Todurov said.
“In this unusual situation, we did not lose a single patient,” Todurov was quoted as saying in the Facebook post sharing the video of the operation. “Thanks to all employees for their coordinated and dedicated work… We will hold our medical front until the victorious end.”
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