Frontline Theatres, Fragile Supply Lines: Practical asks from Ukraine’s war medicine

Frontline Theatres, Fragile Supply Lines: Practical asks from Ukraine’s war medicine

Speaker: Dr. Iryna Rybinkina, Consultant Anaesthetist (King’s) & Volunteer lead for frontline support in Ukraine

The job: build safe surgery anywhere

• Sites: Any standing building near the line—refurbished fast, then kitted to resemble a modern OR as closely as possible.
• Reality: Daily shelling, medics/hospitals targeted, unreliable power/oxygen, evacuations under fire.
• Standard is the goal, but the environment isn’t.

Where things break (and how we can fix them)

1. Donations without sustainment
• Devices arrive stripped (no hoses/valves/cables/consumables).
• Without the small parts, £20–30k machines are inert.
  Ask: Ship with a starter sustainment kit (e.g., hoses, filters, circuits, adaptors, service kits, manuals, and a 3–6 month consumables pack).
2. Adapters & oxygen realities
• Frontline often uses concentrators, not piped O₂.
• Example: connecting an ICU ventilator to concentrators required a specific OEM valve—a £100 part that took months to procure.
  Ask: Provide concentrator-compatible kits and publish a clear bill-of-materials for oxygen interfaces.
3. Service access & codes
• Equipment runs 24/7 for years; faults mount.
• Remote fixes often blocked by service-mode restrictions.
  Ask: Create time-limited, auditable remote service pathways (or OEM-led telemaint) for registered humanitarian sites.
4. Complex customs & border friction
• Humanitarian kit can’t easily leave once in-country; mismatched parts can become expensive dead stock.
  Ask: Pre-ship compatibility verification (power pins, vaporiser indexing, connector standards) + photos/serials before dispatch.
5. Auctions & secondary market
• Arrivals missing critical cards, probes, or cables; some units non-functional.
  Ask: Offer a humanitarian QA tier with verified power-on tests, accessories checklist, and a short hold window for pickup/logistics.
6. Consumables funding
• Great tech dies without disposables.
  Ask: Pair each donation with ring-fenced consumables (or an NGO voucher) for 6–12 months.