Cork group leads battle to get blankets and generators to Ukraine hospital before bitter winter

The appeal was made to Crutches4Ukraine founder John Gilroy, a former senator and psychiatric nurse, when he visited the hospitals along with some of his volunteers last month. Picture: Denis Minihane.

The National Ambulance Service, Nursing Homes Ireland and a search and rescue organisation have joined forces with a Cork-based voluntary organisation to deliver sleeping bags, blankets and generators to aid patients in Ukrainian hospitals who’ll soon face -20 degree temperatures.

Many parts of Ukraine are regularly without electricity because of continued Russian artillery and air strikes and the voluntary group Crutches4Ukraine has been asked by two mental health facilities in the Kyiv region to help keep their 800 patients warm.