Ukraine: ESCRS Coordinating Critical Medical Supplies

ESCRS has taken the initiative to coordinate the supply of ophthalmic surgical materials into Ukraine. We have been in continuous contact with ESCRS members Professor Oksana Vitovska, the head of the Ukrainian Alliance of Ophthalmologists, and Dr Volodymyr Melnyk, the head of the Society of Ukrainian Ophthalmic Surgeons, who both have a good understanding of the local situation of their fellow eye surgeons.

We have contacted several industry partners who were all responsive and willing to help. We then defined the supplies most urgently needed for ophthalmic trauma care, in collaboration with several anterior segment surgeons from ESCRS and vitreoretinal surgeons from EURETINA (as well as input from the European Society of Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery). The St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem (which has a branch in Gaza) as well as NATO surgeons with Afghanistan and Iraq experience have also been consulted on what is most likely to be needed not only during the present conflict but also in the weeks and months that follow. These supplies are now being put together by our industry partners.

The biggest challenge is the logistics of then getting the supplies to our fellow surgeons in Ukraine. With the help of Polish colleagues, foremost former ESCRS council member Ewa Mrukwa-Kominek, we are actively seeking a suitable storage facility in Poland near the border with Ukraine and have it up and running within the next week. From that hub we will organise onward transportation to Ukraine.

I would like to thank the many people who have been instrumental in starting this mission, with their enthusiasm and around-the-clock availability for numerous videoconferences, phone calls, and hundreds of emails. I would like to mention in particular a few names for their wholehearted support with organising donations from industry: Lawrence Willis and Stephan Eigenmann (Alcon), Ralph Lugbauer (Askin), Aldo Liparulo (B&L), Warwick Strand (BVI), Erin McEachren (Johnson & Johnson), and Thomas Huggler and Christoph Bosshard (Oertli). In addition, I’d like to mention Alistair Laidlaw and Dana Conlon from EURETINA and David Verity from St John (and the occuloplasty society), who are using their own contacts from pharmaceutical companies to help. Lastly, our ESCRS managing director Tom Ogilvie-Graham has contributed significantly with his expertise in helping in such crisis situations (and whose wife is presently leading the UN emergency mission in Moldova) and who is being ably supported by James Hampton from our ESCRS office.

We invite all our industry partners and sister societies to help to support this mission – please just contact our office directly.

Lastly, I hope that all our Ukrainian colleagues have managed to keep their families safe and that they are able to deliver the healthcare so urgently needed. Our thoughts are with you and we shall support you to the best of our ability!

Dear ESCRS friends,

From the first day of the beginning of the War against Ukrainian people, principals of democracy and humanism, we, Ukrainian ophthalmic surgeons, felt your support. Every day you ask me about the situation in my country, and every day you propose possible help. We feel it and we are very appreciative. My country, our citizens, and our army show unbelievable examples of heroism. We are the first barrier on the way in Europe of Russian Federation dictation, military aggression, and inhuman suffering. And we believe that truth will win.

We feel your support and we count on your sympathy in future! THANK YOU!

Kindest regards, Volodymyr Melnyk Head of the Society of Ukrainian Ophthalmic Surgeons Oliver Findl President of ESCRS

We are grateful to the ESCRS for collaboration for many years and strong support from the first days of the Russian Federation’s war against independent Ukraine. We highly appreciate every step that ESCRS is doing to help Ukrainian Ophthalmologists to fulfil their work and organise eyecare in this difficult period. But also let me write some words now on behalf of the members of the Ukrainian Alliance of Ophthalmologists, on behalf of hundreds of doctors.

The principles of the development of European and International medicine have always been close and clear to Ukrainian Ophthalmologists. We tried to replicate and develop the most effective technologies. Your activity and purposefulness in the development of technologies and the dissemination of special knowledge have always been an example and an incentive for our development. But the time has come when the principles of our development have been violated, the principles of any civilised society have been completely destroyed, as well as basic principles of life. This time came along with the beginning of the military aggression of the Russian Federation against sovereign Ukraine with the destruction of what we have been creating for years and decades. Today, the best representatives of our people are being killed on the streets of our cities by military action. We all appreciate the support of the ESCRS at this extremely difficult time for Ukraine and Ukrainian Ophthalmologists.