Russia's bombardments are striking homes, paediatric hospitals, schools. One million children are fleeing Ukraine, among them young cancer patients. Russia's bombardments are striking homes, paediatric hospitals, schools. One million children are fleeing Ukraine, among them young cancer patients.
The war in Ukraine is a tragedy for the country's entire population, but above all for its children. While Unicef on 9 March reported that more than one million children had fled the country, Russian raids were striking a paediatric hospital in Mariupol, after other healthcare sites had been reduced to rubble in the preceding days, along with schools, nurseries, orphanages and civilian homes also inhabited by minors.
Since the conflict in Ukraine began, at least 78 children have died (although figures vary), while more than 26,000 refugees have arrived in Italy, of whom 10,000 are minors. Among them are some children with cancer who, after receiving initial treatment in the basements of Kyiv and other cities while Russian bombs fell above ground, have been evacuated to Poland and then to Italy. "There is a great deal of anxiety; families fear their children will no longer receive treatment," LifeGate is told by Alessandra Radaelli, head of the global health programme at Soleterre, a non-profit organisation running projects in Ukraine for the right to health of the population, and of minors in particular.
"The situation of the 6.5 million minors remaining in Ukraine is at breaking point," warned Save the children. Food, water and medicines are in short supply across the country, Russia's bombs continue to strike the majority of cities, and for many children life is spent confined in basement shelters, with no possibility of going out and therefore no possibility of going to school. Another problem is the winter cold: "Children often have nothing but the clothes on their backs to protect them and they are falling ill because the temperature is extremely harsh," Save the children added.
The most brutal episode was the bombardment on 9 March of the paediatric hospital in Mariupol. Videos show walls blown open, windows destroyed, beds hurled into the street amid the rubble. The toll stands at 3 dead, including a 6-year-old child, and 17 injured: the hospital was at that moment being used as a shelter precisely against the missiles launched by Moscow. In reality, however, there have been many other similar attacks.
Amnesty International reported that Russia, using cluster bombs banned under international conventions, struck a nursery school in Kharkiv, while dozens of other schools across the country have been razed to the ground. The same has happened to civilian homes, and the latest figures provided by the UN on 7 March speak of 27 children killed since the start of the conflict, while adding that this is in all likelihood a partial figure given the difficulty of gathering information in a country ravaged by bombardments. On 11 March, Ukrainian authorities stated that the number of children killed is at least 78, with more than 100 injured.
Faced with such a dire situation, families and humanitarian actors are trying to get children to safety. Martial law prohibits men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine, which means that children currently make up the largest share of refugees. The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, reports that more than two million people have fled, and of these, according to Unicef, more than one million are minors.
Among the civilians living through the tragedy of the war in Ukraine, there are also many children with cancer. In the country, childhood mortality rates for cancer are higher than the European average: while on the continent 75–80 per cent of children recover, in Ukraine the figure is only 55.5 per cent, due to delays in diagnosis and a shortage of medical-surgical equipment and medicines.
With the first bombardments the situation deteriorated further, as children in the clinics were moved to basements, which certainly complicated their treatment. Most of them were subsequently evacuated. "In Kyiv we have a care home for children with cancer," explains Alessandra Radaelli. "When the conflict began, the children were transferred to Lviv, where we had already been setting up a bone marrow transplant unit for some time — one that had also brought 12 doctors from the local hospital to the San Matteo in Pavia for in-ward training. From Lviv the children are then transferred by bus to Poland, and from there flights take them to Italy, and not only Italy."
The problem, however, is that many child cancer patients from the capital and other cities hit by the bombardments have gone missing. "There are many children who need to be tracked down house by house, because at this moment they may not have been hospitalised in a clinic but were nonetheless undergoing treatment," Radaelli continues. "There is work that is taking a great deal of time — searching for and gathering these people."
Even the transfer to Lviv and then across the border is no simple matter, since these are debilitated children who often struggle even to walk. "Yesterday we transported a child who was on a stretcher," Radaelli continues, "he couldn't even sit in a wheelchair. The airport gave us support to accompany him by ambulance right up to the plane." Since the conflict began, several flights to Italy have already departed. 13 children with cancer evacuated from Ukraine arrived by plane from Romania in Turin, where they are now receiving treatment at the Regina Margherita hospital. Other flights from Poland, organised by Soleterre Onlus itself, have brought sick children to Milan, where they have been taken in by the Istituto Nazionale dei tumori and the Spedali Civili di Brescia.
"There will be many more flights — every year in Ukraine there are 1,200 new cases of cancer among children and at the moment we are looking at around 4,000 cases counting all those who are ill," Radaelli explains. "These are very large numbers; there are other organisations trying to use the same evacuation scheme for other European countries. But Italy in particular has shown great willingness to take them in."
Children with cancer are only a small part of the flow of Ukrainian refugees reaching Italy. By 10 March, according to data released by the Viminale, 26,000 refugees fleeing the war had already arrived in Italy. Of these, 7,000 — around 40 per cent — are minors. Proof that the first to live through the tragedy of the war in Ukraine are, above all, children.
