Surgeons continue operating on boy despite power outages

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The surgery had already begun when the lights went out at the kyiv Heart Institute. It was another night of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and generators were activated at the hospital. The medical team knew what to do and went ahead with the naturalness acquired during the nine months of war. Now, in the light of the lanterns, the operation of a child continued.

“This is how we perform heart surgery today”, described the surgeon Borys Todurov, director of the institute, while recording a video of the procedure, warning of the difficulties experienced in Ukrainian hospitals. “The surgery is being performed with artificial blood flow. There is no electricity, ”he explains.

At the head of the operating table, the surgeon continued, indifferent to the recordings. “Is everything stable?” he asks, receiving a yes for an answer. “Okay. Let’s try to complete [a cirurgia] as fast as possible”.

The scenario is repeated in many Ukrainian hospitals. With around 190 patients and 300 employees, the Heart Institute now only performs operations in emergencies. “This is how the ‘Russian world’ comes. In this Wednesday’s attack on kyiv, several residents were killed and the city was plunged into darkness and cold,” Todurov wrote in an Instagram post. Despite the difficulties that night, at least they did not lose any patients.

So far we are holding on, but every hour it gets harder.”

Russian attacks are relentless, and in recent days there have been numerous reports of Ukrainian regions going dark. He can’t talk about the battlefield, but on the medical front Todurov guarantees that they will continue to do everything until the “bitter end”.

kyiv was just one of the targets of the Russian bombardment that hit several critical infrastructures and caused blackouts throughout the territory, which even affected neighboring Moldova.

Ukraine’s response was to create so-called “invincibility points” – places where basic services are available for free, such as access to electricity, water, internet – but repeated attacks make repairs difficult, cause longer blackouts and increase the danger to civilians as winter approaches.

More than 4,000 ‘invincibility points’ created in Ukraine in case of Russian attacks, says Zelensky

According to the United Nations Organization (UN), 30 victims were registered this Wednesday, including injuries and deaths, and millions of people were left without electricity, access to water or heating. Areas like Lviv, Zaporizhia, Odessa and Chernigov were completely without power.