An Orillia doctor recently spent a week volunteering with Rescuers Without Borders to help citizens from Ukraine forced to flee their homeland.
Jeff Pitcher was stationed in Medyka, Poland, a primary border crossing to western Ukraine.
“A lot of people had been living in bomb shelters underground for two or three weeks before I got there,” he said. “They had limited access to food, clean water, and even access to the internet and outside world because the Russians cut off all of their communications devices like the internet and cellphone towers.”
A common theme Pitcher noticed from conversations with Ukrainians was that their local schools and hospitals had been destroyed.
“I think that was designed to encourage people to leave,” he said. “I went into Ukraine to do some medical checks on people, and I would see mothers, and children with their fathers. When they got to the border checkpoint, the fathers would hug their family and there would be lots of tears. The father would go back into Ukraine to fight and the women and children would leave into Poland.”
The 40-year-old physician says his experience in the area was “heartbreaking.” He said a lot of people coming over the border were dealing with the stomach flu from drinking unclean water.
“We would treat their dehydration,” he said. “A lot of them had chronic medical needs and didn’t have their medication, so we refilled their prescriptions.”
Some were even suffering from days-old gunshot wounds, he said. Some women and children also suffered with shrapnel wounds and cuts on their faces.
“There was a lady who amazingly escaped Mariupol,” he said. “Her home had been destroyed, her family had been killed, but she managed to escape with a friend with a car and they drove through farmers’ fields while being shot at by the Russians.”
Pitcher says the woman was visibly shaking when she crossed the border, overcome by the stress of the life-changing experience.
Despite seeing traumatic sights and hearing crippling stories from survivors, Pitcher says he is thankful he had the opportunity to go to the war-torn area.
“I think I was able to make a big difference as far as assisting people,” he said. “In addition, I was able to take over a lot of medical supplies, which have made it to different areas of the country.”
The hardest part for Pitcher, as a father of three, was seeing children in the middle of the night being carried by their mothers with their young siblings behind with their teddy bears dragging along the ground.
“Their eyes were sunken and their faces were flat,” he said. “You could see that they had been through so much.”
While the war will impact the lives of Ukrainians forever, Pitcher says the people are strong and resilient.
“They carry on and they know what needs to be done,” he said. “These mothers brought their children to foreign countries because they knew they had to get their children to safety. The men stayed behind because they know they need to fight for freedom and their right for democracy.”
Pitcher has assisted in rescue missions before, most notably in New York City after 9/11, and in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.
“This was a lot different because I’ve never done work in a war zone area,” he said. “Seeing natural disasters leads to a similar situation in the sense that people have lost their homes, they’ve lost some friends, but this one is so widespread and it’s war.”
He says he’s never seen death on the scale that it is happening in Ukraine.
“When they are leaving these war-torn towns, there are bodies everywhere,” Pitcher explained. “There are bodies of civilians, bodies of military people, and you can imagine these young kids seeing these bodies lying on the ground that the Russians leave out to intimidate.”
Pitcher encourages locals to help Ukrainians by getting involved with organizations that are looking for host families for refugees. He also says there is a great need to support organizations that are providing support to refugees who are living in Europe.
“One of those organizations is the Salvation Army,” he said. “They have organizations in Europe and inside Ukraine. They are providing shelter, food, and mental health support.”
