Help Ukraine!

A little girl had to leave her home in the middle of the night because her family wasn’t safe. Russian forces were coming for her father. Little Anna was turning 4 years old when she ended up in a refugee camp. She was so scared and stressed out it made her sick. She was almost 4 years old and a pediatrician came to the camp to help her. That was 1981. Little Anna became a pediatrician because of that kindness she received in that refugee camp fleeing Poland. Today she is returning to Poland. Returning to a refugee camp, to help the children of Ukraine as a part of a grass-roots movement of Polish physicians near the border of Ukraine. She returns a far different person from the little girl she was. A mother of 3, an ironman triathlete, and an accomplished physician with a masters degree in public health with over two decades of experience as a pediatrician with experience in general pediatrics, pediatric intensive care medicine, emergency medicine, and subspecialty training as a pediatric gastroenterologist.

 

Dr. Michael McCurdy will accompany Anna on her volunteer mission. Dr. McCurdy, outgoing chair of medicine at University of Maryland St. Joseph Hospital, is a professor of medicine trained in emergency medicine and critical care medicine. As part of Nereus Medical Solutions, a company focused on the delivery of critical care in resource-limited settings, he has extensive experience in disaster response and has authored “Critical Care Anywhere: Principles for High-Functioning Management in Low-Resource Environments”. Dr. McCurdy is now chief medical officer of BOA Biomedical, which develops and deploys novel technology to identify, track, diagnose, and treat infectious disease.

 

Dr. Monika Cholewinski will also serve on this mission. Dr. Cholewinski is a Emergency Medicine trained physician and former executive officer in the American Red Cross who has also worked as a Polish medical translator.

Dr. Sophie Korzan is a senior pulmonary / critical care fellow at the University of Maryland. Her family is from Lublin, Poland.

Dr. Nick Kulas rounds out the team. Dr. Kulas is an emergency medicine resident from Chicago who is fluent in Ukranian.

 

Please consider supporting this effort. Anna (Dr. Reed) will be taking some key supplies from the US for donation, but has been provided a car in Poland and will be able to purchase and transport significant quantities of supplies while in Poland to help keep refugees healthy and to offer a modicum of comfort.

Unfortunately we are not currently able to facilitate integration of additional team members. The team will depart 3/12 and will be stationed in and around Rzeszow, Poland. We will be exploring the logistics of supporting additional teams at a later date, including evaluating whether team members who don't speak Polish or Ukranian can be of assistance.

 

Please help out – anything you can give will make a difference directly. Please also share this post on social media.

Will update this posting as the team checks in.