abc.net.au
Doctors race through Kyiv missile strike to deliver child's donor heart
With missiles falling on buildings around him along dark streets lit with explosions and flames, Borys Todurov kept driving. The Ukrainian cardiac surgeon was in a race against time, travelling with a heart his team had just removed from a six-year-old donor. The 12-year-old recipient was on an operating table on the other side of Kyiv, her chest open and ready for her transplant. "When we take the heart from the donor we only have a few hours — about four hours — to transport the donor heart to our hospital," Dr Todurov, director of the Kyiv Heart Institute, told the ABC. Not wanting to put the driver's life in danger, Dr Todurov jumped behind the wheel of the ambulance. Alongside fellow surgeon Sofiia Chaikovska, a scrub nurse, and an anaesthesiologist, he braved the 20-kilometre drive through what was one of Russia's largest missile and drone attacks. Dr Todurov said they knew it was their only chance to save the life of the young girl whose condition had recently deteriorated. He appeared steely-focused on the road ahead in a video of the incident. At one point, with air raid sirens wailing in the background, he turns to the camera and...
