The 20 students from the bombed northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv will be given seven weeks of training at Cambridge University as part of the programme. As a result of the war and the COVID pandemic, most of their training in the last two years has been essentially completed. Warning of ‘very real risk of nuclear disaster’ at Zaporizhzhia plant – Ukraine news live Despite this, after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, many of them were taken to hospitals to help treat patients. One of them was Zaur Badalov, who now participates in the university program. Growing up in Kharkiv, the 22-year-old was forced to flee to western Ukraine after the outbreak of war, where he continued his studies online while working at a local hospital. “I was staying in a hospital in Kharkiv on the day of the invasion; I was the first to notice the windows shaking and woke up the others,” he said. “We were all in shock and then that morning we had injured people coming to the hospital and needing help.” After moving, the student of Kharkiv National Medical University began working in an emergency department. “People just needed help from the medics. So we just did first aid every time, it didn’t matter if it was a civilian or soldiers,” he told Sky News. Follow the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Spreaker As a man, Mr Badalov needed special permission to leave Ukraine in order to continue his education. “It’s a really good opportunity for us because we can take that information and share it with our university and our students,” he said. Cambridge believes it is the first program of its kind to support Ukrainian medical students in the UK. Students will train at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Royal Papworth Hospital and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. As part of the course, they will shadow doctors in wards and clinics and practice basic skills such as physical examination of patients. Image: Pic: University of Cambridge Student traveled through Russia to find a position While it is conventional for the university to welcome students from other countries, Dr Jonathan Fuld from Cambridge’s department of medicine said the group had experienced “exceptional” conditions. “They were scattered all over Europe, the men who were still in Ukraine under the law who needed support from Kharkiv to find ways to get their visas back,” he said. “One of our students was actually in occupied territory and made a trip through Russia to get a visa that allowed them to come to this placement. “So on our end, there was a fair amount of administration involved. In the end, all the effort and the real challenge to make this happen fell on Kharkiv and the students.” It is important that students return to Ukraine, says the clinical dean Many of Ukraine’s hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or damaged as a result of the ongoing conflict. Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 1:25 A maternity hospital was hit by an airstrike In March, several people were killed when a maternity hospital in Mariupol was reduced to rubble in a Russian airstrike. While the students will spend almost two months training in the UK, Clinical Dean of the School of Clinical Medicine, Paul Wilkinson, said it was important they returned to Ukraine. “Ukraine’s medical schools do not want to lose students and doctors who will be necessary to rebuild health services in the country after the conflict,” he said.
