Two nurses in Maine are stepping up to support the people of Ukraine during the Russian invasion. Best friends Natalia Iantsevitch and Anna Stasiv are both from Ukraine and work as nurse practitioners.
Feeling helpless from half a world away, the two friends are using their medical contacts to try and get needed medical supplies to the war zone for the soldiers and civilians who have been injured back home.
“They are very overwhelmed by the amount of wounded and people they have to tend to, so they definitely need physical bodies to help and supplies,” said Anna Stasiv, a Maine nurse from Ukraine.
Stasviv has already contacted hospital administrators in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv from her kitchen table in Yarmouth. The administrators are emailing a list of what is most needed.
“Stuff like first-aid dressings, tourniquets,” Stasviv said.
The two nurses are trying to stay busy by doing what they can to help their family and friends in Ukraine.
“Our family is mostly on the western part of Ukraine,” Stasviv said. “Some of the family from Kyiv with little kids, they were able to leave the city on time, some of them not so lucky.”
The two nurses are currently working on a GoFundMe campaign, which will be launched soon. They are speaking with hospitals and medical facilities in Maine in the hopes of snatching up supplies that would otherwise be thrown away because the expiration date has passed.
“I don’t think at the time of war it matters really when that bandage or syringe or suture expires,” Stasviv said.
Stasviv will oversee logistics in Maine while caring for her 2-year-old son, while Iantsevitch prepares to travel to Poland and drive to Ukraine’s western border on Sunday.
“Anybody who’s going to the country where there is active war and it’s escalating is taking a great chance,” Stasviv said.
