Firm's tech helps Ukraine's wounded

TORONTO FIRM'S ICU-IN-A-SUITCASE HELPING TREAT THOSE WOUNDED BY WAR `IN THE FIELD, HOSPITAL ... EVERYWHERE'

It's relatively far from the front lines, but a major hospital in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv has felt the impact of Russia's invasion of the country profoundly.

Employees say they've treated 5,000 civilians over the last five months who were wounded — often severely — during the fighting in eastern Ukraine, a dramatic change from the hospital's peacetime role.

“Many of them have amputated legs or hands,” says Zoriana, a hospital administrator. “Before the war, we had only civilian problems — people who fall on the ground, break their leg ... Not running from rockets.”

“We always need blood donors.” She won't discuss the more sensitive topic of military casualties, which likely have presented an even greater burden.

But treating that unprecedented surge of war-zone trauma cases has been helped at least a little by a Toronto company's donation of unique, cutting-edge technology.

Thornhill Medical flew over samples of its portable life-support systems, devices that provide most of the treatment and monitoring of a hospital intensive-care unit, in a single unit that can literally be slung over someone's shoulder. It supplied similar, on-the-go anesthesia machines, too.

The company and the Ukrainian recipients say the gear allows health workers to provide advanced life support and surgery in places where it would otherwise be impossible.

“We can use it everywhere. In the field, in the hospital, in the emergency ambulance,” said Dr. Yurii, an anesthesiologist. “You don't need a supply of oxygen, or even electricity. You can use it for a few hours (on battery).”

For security reasons, he and Zoriana asked that only their first names be published and the hospital left unidentified.

The firm's donation underscores a perhaps overlooked need in Ukraine. Not only does it require weapons to battle an adversary with overwhelming firepower, but also medical aid to cope with huge numbers of military and civilian casualties.

Dr. Joe Fisher, a co-founder of Thornhill and an anesthesiologist at Toronto's University Health Network (UHN), suggests the Canadian government put more emphasis on providing such assistance to Ukraine.

“If we flagged that we were sending this type of equipment (versus killing tools) we would be the envy and the honoured of the world,” he said by email. “Why would we not do this?”

In fact, the federal government should own a fair number of Thornhill's life-support systems by now. It ordered over 1,000 of them in the early stages of the pandemic amid worries that a deluge of COVID patients could cause a shortage of breathing machines. A ventilator forms part of the firm's mobile unit.

The technology emerged from Fisher's UHN laboratory a number of years ago, developed partly at the urging of the U.S. Marine Corps.

The prosaically named MOVES SLC is the star product, combining an oxygen-conserving ventilator, an oxygen “concentrator,” equipment for monitoring vital signs and suction for clearing airways, all in a “rugged” 18-kilogram package that's about the size of a small golf bag.

Among its key features is the concentrator, which creates oxygen by taking in air and removing the nitrogen, effectively eliminating the need to carry around bulky oxygen tanks. And it's battery powered.

Also donated to the Ukrainians were MADM units. The size — in Fisher's words — of a “two-slice toaster,” it vaporizes and delivers gas anesthesia, with even greater portability than MOVES.

The equipment has been purchased by militaries in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Israel and beyond, as well as for use in disaster relief and, more recently, pandemic backup.

“If there isn't medevac capability available, if the country doesn't have control of the skies, the patient may have to be taken care of at the point of injury for an extended period of time,” said Lesley Gouldie, Thornhill's CEO. “This device can be used wherever the war fighter is injured.”

A retired army colonel who acts as a consultant for the company asked contacts with the Ukrainian government soon after the war started if Thornhill could help. “Obviously there was dire need,” said Gouldie.

At the height of fighting in the Donbas region in June, as many as 100 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 300 injured every day, the U.S. military has estimated.

A team of Thornhill employees took some of the devices to Ukraine and provided training as well as donating the equipment itself.

Yurii said the devices have undoubtedly saved lives and will save others, and said Ukraine could use more of them.

But the country's wartime health-care needs extend further, especially to foreign medical expertise, said Zoriana.

“We have injuries we didn't have before. We need

WE HAVE INJURIES WE DIDN'T HAVE BEFORE.

some doctors that worked in Afghanistan, in all the hot points,” she said. “We need doctors that know everything about war trauma, doctors who can help us with different kinds of it.”

Many such physicians from other countries have, in fact, volunteered to work in Ukraine, said the administrator. But, she added, “it's never enough.”