Can you help this Ditchling team’s huge effort to get medical supplies to Ukraine?

Kate Allisat, Erica Titcomb, Donna Gunn Ballard, Dr Mariia Atlantova and Dr Andrew Hill all live in the village and have set up the South Downs Appeal for Medical Supplies for Ukraine.

People can purchase essential items for group via an Amazon wish list, which are delivered to an address in East End Road and stored in a nearby barn before couriers take them to Poland and Ukrainian hospitals.

People can also buy items themselves and deliver them to the address on the group’s Facebook page.

Kate, 52, Donna, 54, and Erica, 52, said they started the appeal after watching distressing TV footage following the Russian invasion.

“I just felt completely helpless, as I think most people do in the UK,” said Donna.

She said she and Kate initially wanted to help via ‘the normal route’ of donating to a centre in London but found this was already overrun with supplies.

So the trio decided on a targeted approach, reaching out to Dr Mariia Atlantova in Ditchling, who is from Ukraine and has contacts there.

Dr Atlantova, 37, who works in clinical research, is involved with SMART Medical Aid, an NGO of health care professionals that is currently in Ukraine.

She said this organisation was created by her friend Dr Iryna Rybinkina and is organising ways to get medical equipment directly to Ukrainian hospitals.

“Half our team is trying to find medical equipment that we can purchase and send to Ukraine, the other is dealing with medical supplies, such as airways systems,” she said.

Dr Atlantova said it is a complicated process with not all of the items coming from the UK.

She said she feels terrible about the current situation in Ukraine, calling it ‘an absolute nightmare’.

She also said her father has decided to stay in Ukraine.

“He said that it’s his country and that he is willing to fight for that,” said Dr Atlantova.

Her husband Dr Andrew Hill, 63, is also helping the campaign by gathering ‘out-of-date’ stock from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, where he works.

Dr Hill, a consultant anaesthetist who specialises in cardiothoracic anaesthesia and intensive care, plans to travel to Ukraine on Friday, April 8.

“I think I can work with the most basic equipment,” he said, adding that he would take over a couple of ‘grab bags’ full of advanced airway kit because the focus at Ukrainian hospitals is on wounds and airway management at the moment.

He said is not particularly worried about making the journey and is ‘prepared to take a risk on it’ because he feels it is something he should do.

The South Downs Appeal for Medical Supplies for Ukraine said the items they need most urgently include tourniquets, Asprin or Paracetamol, elastic bandages, colostomy bags, nappies, insulin needles, disposable scalpels and medicines for children.

The full list is on the group’s Facebook page

The group said people can also help Ukraine by donating to Medical Aid Ukraine’s JustGiving page.

Erica thanked Lewes MP Maria Caulfield and Arundel and South Downs MP Andrew Griffith for helping the group source supplies and raise awareness about the campaign.

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