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During a deadly Russian missile barrage on Kyiv on July 8, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital suffered a direct hit. More than 600 patients and at least that many medical staff were inside the Okhmatdyt Hospital at the time of the strike, which killed two adults and injured more than 50 people, including seven children. Another child who was evacuated from the hospital later died.
Anna Brudna was working in an on-call room when she heard the first explosion. A colleague suggested that everyone move to the corridor in case the windows got blown out. But Brudna didn’t listen; as a doctor in the bone marrow transplant division at Kyiv’s Okhmatydyt children’s hospital, she had too much work to do.
“The patients we prep for transplants are hooked up to machines and kept on IVs in sterile isolation rooms — if we ran off somewhere every time there’s an air raid alert, we simply wouldn’t be able to treat anyone,” she says.