Canadian medical mission helps Ukrainians at the Polish border

New Pathway – Ukrainian News.

Poland remains at the forefront of humanitarian efforts to help Ukraine during the current war and Ukrainians fleeing death and destruction. Polish people across the globe are helping Ukraine and Ukrainians.

A Polish Canadian, a practicing nurse and a Member of the Ontario Parliament (Mississauga Centre), Natalia Kusendova did not wait on the sidelines when Russia invaded Ukraine. She remembered the stories that her babcia (granny) told her about Russia’s violence against the Poles throughout the 20th and 21st century. Kusendova’s granny lives in Poland, just 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, which added to the MPP’s personal connection to this war.

Together with her nursing colleagues at the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, Kusendova organized a team of nurses to join a medical mission to the Ukraine/Poland border through Canadian Medical Assistance Teams (CMAT), whose director Valerie Rzepka is also of Polish heritage.

Just around ten days after February 24, the first group of Canadian healthcare professionals went to the Ukraine/Poland border. The mission set up two medical checkpoints, one on each side of the border.
Kusendova said that the most distressing was to see a lot of Ukrainian women, children and elderly people with all kinds of medical ailments. Some of the most common conditions were hypothermia and fever, especially among young children. In many cases, the mission’s specialists suspected COVID-19. However, there was no point in testing the people because of the lack of opportunities to isolate the ill.

A lot of the elderly Ukrainians left their homes in a hurry and didn't have all of their medications. The mission had a pharmacist on the team, who happened to be Kusendova’s husband and who was responsible for medical reconciliation and provision of medications. The medications, worth about $20,000 in value, were donated by Canadian pharmacies and other organizations. LOT Polish Airlines provided discounted prices for the mission’s flights and shipped its medical equipment free of charge.

Kusendova spent ten days in Poland as she had to return to her work in Parliament and other obligations. The mission's medical deployment teams work in three-week periods and currently there is a third team, containing nurses, doctors, mental health professionals and a translator at the Ukraine/Poland border. The mission’s work is demanding: 12-hour day and night shifts, the medical professionals often serve three or four buses of refugees at a time.

On a personal level, as a fairly young person, and as a person of Polish heritage, this experience was traumatizing for Kusendova. She said: “I’ve heard about war and occupation of Poland and read about it in history books. But to be seeing the effects of war and bearing witness to this tragedy, these war crimes and atrocities of Russia, I'm completely shaken. To see firsthand the mothers with the children being separated from fathers, the children crying for their fathers, it's shocking. I didn't think our generation would see this level of suffering happening in Europe”.

Kusendova said that she is worried about her family who live back in Poland on the back of security threats coming from Russia. She said: “We don't know what Putin is capable of. He was threatening nuclear warfare and many of my older friends lived through the Chornobyl disaster of 1986. I'm extremely worried”.

Another thing that worries Kusendova is the normalization of this war, which is now in its seventh week, in the Western world and in Canada in particular. “That's my biggest worry, for the people of Ukraine. And, frankly, for the people of Poland as well, that this is becoming normalized. I feel like we could do more as the Western world and Western society to stop this war and prevent future wars”.

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