Kyiv hospital treats sick orphans evacuated from northeastern Ukraine

(Reuters) – Some of Ukraine’s most vulnerable orphans have reached relative safety at a hospital in Kyiv where doctors hope to be able to provide care and perform life-saving surgeries.

More than 70 children, including infants, who have spent the past two weeks cared for in bomb shelters in the besieged city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine have been safely evacuated, local officials said over the weekend.

Most were transferred to Lviv in western Ukraine but some were too sick to continue the journey.

Four infants are now being treated at the Kyiv Heart Centre, the country’s leading cardiology and cardiac surgery hospital.

“These children have no parents, they lived in an orphanage. All four were born earlier this year,” said Borys Todurov, a cardiac surgeon at Kyiv Heart Centre.

“They found themselves on the frontline, they found themselves in a situation where they needed help but there was no one to help them because the fighting started,” he said, adding that they were unable to travel on to Lviv because they were “in critical condition.”

(Reporting by Antony Paone and Anna Dabrowska; Writing by Mark Porter; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)