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As several areas in Ukraine were left without power amid Russian missile strikes, doctors at the Kyiv Heart Institute were performing an open-heart surgery on a child. Despite the blackout, the doctors continued the operation and saved the child’s life, the Guardian reported.
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Borys Todurov, a surgeon, captured the operation on camera and the doctors were seen working with surgical headlights. Todurov is heard asking his colleagues to speed up the procedure and saying that the generator would be used the next day. The surgery was performed on November 25 using artificial blood flow.
In a video shared by BBC on Instagram, the doctor is heard saying, “This is how we perform heart surgery today.” Criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin, he says, “What really happened, started nine months ago when paranoid (Russian president) Putin declared this war on Ukraine. And almost nine months we have been living with war and this daily threat of missile attacks.”
“That day there were several missile attacks, when our electricity was completely cut off, we lost the water supply in the hospital and also the sewage and heating system stopped working. In these conditions all we can do is warm each other with our smiles and with our heart’s warmth inside us,” he adds.
The doctors have been hailed as heroes online. An Instagram user commented, “Heroes in every way.” Another user wrote, “This breaks my heart into millions. The saddest story of this world, is that wars are almost everywhere. Where there’s no war, they are the cause of it somewhere it’s is.”
