IN ONE IMAGEThe SurgeonBy Brendan Hoffman
One minute they were treating patients. The next they were dismantling the remains of a children’s hospital hit by a Russian missile.
This is Dr. Ihor Kolodka. That is his own blood. He was hit by flying debris while operating on a young girl in Kyiv.
Brick by brick, people handed along remnants of the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital as rescue workers searched for survivors.
This is the building Dr. Kolodka was working in when the missile hit, sending shrapnel and shards of glass screaming through the rooms.
As volunteers helped clear the site, rescuers were able to pull at least three children from the rubble.
“I could not not help,” Dr. Kolodka said when we spoke hours after I photographed him helping remove debris from the missile strike in Ukraine on Monday. “It’s my hospital, my people. I’m a doctor.”
But first he needed help himself.
Dr. Kolodka had been in the middle of performing cleft-lip surgery when the air-raid sirens went off at Ohmatdyt. Unable to stop working, the operating team plowed ahead — until the explosion.
DEAR VIEWERS PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO HELP US PAY SERVER COSTS, ANY AMOUNT IS APPRECIATED..
THANK YOU!