A specially equipped medical train run by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) completed its first journey across Ukraine on April 26, carrying 26 patients from Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro to hospitals in Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv. Most required post-operative care following traumatic injuries.
MSF equipped and staffed the train to care for patients who needed to be medically evacuated from war-affected areas of eastern Ukraine, working in collaboration with Ukraine's Ministry of Health and National Railways. Hospitals in areas close to active war zones frequently send out urgent requests for patients to be referred to other hospitals in safer areas of the country. This is partly to manage their bed capacity as new patients keep coming with war wounds, but also to give the patients the best chance to have the dedicated medical care they need.