About the Foundation
Foundation Cross Borders
It was established on the basis of the Sosnowiec Trauma Center Medical Team – a group of people who are not indifferent to the harm of others. And who just can’t pass by her indifferently. On the day of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, an idea emerged – they need to be helped.
The beginnings were difficult. As the first medical team officially operating in a neighboring country, our tasks were primarily to identify needs and goals. For a simple reason – most of the aid brought by citizens – ended up in border warehouses and got stuck there. Nobody at the beginning of the war knew what was needed and to whom. The “common mobilization” was heart-warming, but its effectiveness remained small. Thanks to the contacts established by the team’s management during the Maidan operations in 2014, we were able to analyze, step by step, the most pressing needs and the places where help should go. And thus eliminate those where it was pointless or even unnecessary.
When the needs on the other side of the border were initially identified, action began. Unlike those who ended up helping by delivering supplies to the Polish border warehouses, doing it with enthusiasm, but without a specific plan – our Team was the first to start delivering the necessary equipment and medicines to “own hands” in Ukraine.
Supplying the Municipal Hospital in Mostyska was the first step in learning about the realities of aid in Ukraine. There, our teams of rescuers and doctors undertook to help the medical facility, saving lives on the spot and evacuating patients who the hospital could not provide professional care to Poland.
We have already prepared further transports for the Military-Medical Clinical Center of the Western Region in Lviv – directly meeting their needs.
However, the situation at the front was dynamic. During the siege of Kiev, more and more wounded were brought to Vinnitsa. There, the Team made contact with the management of the Military-Medical Clinical Center of the Central Region. We directed subsequent transports of drugs and advanced medicine for wound therapy to WMCKRC and the War Veterans Hospital in Vinnitsa, where the most seriously injured soldiers were sent. It was there, thanks to the support of donors, that we first delivered VAC sets for negative pressure wound therapy. The joy of the doctors at the sight of this “cosmic technology” was enormous!
During our countless trips to Ukraine, members of the Team acted entirely for charity – sacrificing their professional and family duties – to help those in need.
Currently, the area of operation of the Cross Borders Foundation has expanded to frontline cities and supporting the fighting battalions of the National Guard of Ukraine. We also had requests for support from marine units subordinated to the army from the Odessa region.
Continuously, since the end of February, members of the Team, and currently the Cross Borders Foundation, have been raising funds to support those fighting on the front and to help in the treatment of wounded soldiers in hospitals in the territory of Ukraine affected by military operations.
Thanks to our help, the Dnipro-1 and Azov units received the most modern equipment and medicine needed on the battlefield.
From the personal equipment of soldiers, through dressings, to advanced, combat-configured, tactical and medical backpacks for military medics. We know directly from our Ukrainian brothers that they saved many soldiers.
Helping the combatants in the form of battlefield medicine and military equipment is one thing. Members of the Foundation were also to train field rescuers of the Azov regiment. Unfortunately, before we managed to organize such a training, the Russian offensive on Mariupol and the practically annihilation of the unit defending the city, and later only the AzovStal plant, meant that our plans did not come to fruition. However, there are other needs – the Dnipro-1 battalion is asking for the organization of field hospitals. Near the front, in the “safe” zone, where Polish medics could help wounded guardsmen.
The situation in the combat zone is so difficult that we know from the accounts of the combatants that Russian soldiers were “hunting” for medics. During our last visit, we learned that the battalion lost four medical teams with ambulances that wanted to help at the front. They were destroyed by tank cannon fire.
– Kacaps shoot medics like dogs. They hit ambulances with cannons. They are shooting at the paramedics, one of the commanders of Dnipro-1 told us.
This situation leaves the soldiers on their own in the event of a gunshot. There are three field medics per battalion! Hence, all kinds of easy-to-use, yet advanced and effective personal haemostatic dressings and tactical tourniquets are a good of the highest need. The Cross Borders Foundation, thanks to the financial support of the Tauron Foundation, will soon deliver 25 tactical medical backpacks and hundreds of field, top-class hemostatic dressings, burn dressings and equipment for field first aid kits to the front.
Other equipment is also required. The field binoculars (100 pieces) that we recently delivered – “gave eyes” to the scouts. The transport also included a hundred tactical vests and knee pads – we purchased this equipment thanks to LUMA Holding. 200 tactical tourneys and other equipment, including medical equipment, so needed by the fighters, were collected thanks to the support of people of good will cooperating with the Foundation.
Constant transports and the evacuation of the wounded and sick from the areas covered by the fighting have become the daily bread of the Foundation’s members, who are now reaching the frontline areas with help. From the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, the team evacuated Ukrainian doctors with their families to Poland, seriously injured victims of accidents that local hospitals were unable to provide adequate treatment and care, wounded as a result of warfare, as well as cardio and oncology patients – to Silesian medical facilities.
Recently, the Foundation, at the request of the Diocesan Curia in Sosnowiec, transported a Roman Catholic priest working in Ukraine for treatment at the Provincial Specialist Hospital No. 5 in Sosnowiec. The priest’s health condition and the ongoing war in Ukraine did not allow him to be provided with appropriate examinations and treatment on the spot. After the successful operation, the members of the Foundation transported the priest to Ukraine. This is not the only case of cooperation between the Foundation and the Church.
Our activities are always aimed at helping those in need. When team members reach areas of combat or minefields, they often forget about the threat. However, we are reminded of this by official thanks – “for providing voluntary help to those fighting in Ukraine, risking their own health and life.”
And conversations with soldiers who say – “the whole world helps us. But without Poland, there would be no Ukraine. And they add – “Poland has not yet perished as long as we are alive!”.