Owing to the efforts of a Ukrainian-born registered nurse, Southlake Regional Health Centre has donated a truck filled with medical equipment to be distributed to Ukrainian hospitals.
Anastasia Vlassov, who works at Southlake's Coronary Intensive Care Unit, reached out to a colleague at an Ottawa hospital who put her in contact with the Canada-Ukraine Foundation who then passed on the urgently needed supplies.
She knew she needed to do something to help and that Ukraine hospitals were in need of supplies, Vlassov said in a media release.
“It brings very happy tears to my eyes to be able to help like this. I am so, so grateful to Southlake and our staff for pulling together to donate this equipment.”
Vlassov, who hails from Kyiv, together with Southlake’s Facilities and Biomedical Engineering teams, gathered ventilators, patient monitors, defibrillators, ultrasound machines and other equipment recently removed from use or replaced with updated technology.
“This has made my heart happy to be able to do something like this for the people of Ukraine,” said Elizabeth Stairs, senior biomedical technologist at Southlake. “This is something I’m very passionate about so when I heard that we were participating in this initiative I wanted to help. It’s made us really excited to be able to donate this equipment that we no longer need and know it’s going to a good cause that will help save lives.”
On May 25, the donations were transported, via the volunteer truck, to a warehouse in Ottawa that is temporarily storing medical donations from across Ontario.
“It was amazing to see our teams come together to help organize this donation,” said Brent Snoddon, manager of Facility Operations and Biomedical Engineering. “I’m so proud that we were able to contribute and support Ukraine in this way.”
