Humanitarian Crises
Radiation Therapy Under the Falling Bombs: A Tale of 2 Ukrainian Cancer Centers
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, brought the largest humanitarian disaster since World War II to the heart of Europe. The Russian army has caused absolute destruction and chaos for everyone in its path, and Ukraine has lost tens of thousands of civilian lives, out of which many were innocent children. Many more have been wounded, and approximately one-third of the population of Ukraine has been displaced: 7 million as refugees and 7.1 million as internally displaced people.While Ukrainian Soldiers Are Fearlessly Defending Their Country, Ukrainian Oncologists Are Bravely Battling Cancer
Andriy Beznosenko, a 39-year-old Chief Medical Officer of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Kyiv and the president of the Ukrainian Society of Clinical Oncology (Fig. 1), agreed to talk to Roman Kowalchuk and I about the dire situation for cancer care in Ukraine. He has been living in the National Cancer Institute building since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For the NCI staff, it is safer to stay in the hospital than staying home on their own, plus the early and frequent curfew hours do not let the hospital staff leave home (Fig. 2).
