West Midlands Ambulance Service helps Ukraine cancer patients

Ambulance workers who helped transport a group of Ukrainian children to hospitals to undergo life-saving cancer treatment have been praised for "incredible teamwork".

West Midlands Ambulance Service said more than 50 staff had been involved in the operation at Birmingham Airport.

The 21 children and their immediate families arrived on Sunday on a flight arranged by the British government.

The service said it was "incredibly proud" to have been part of the plan.

Staff from both the non-emergency patient transport service and the emergency side transported the visitors from the war-torn nation to a triage centre, before taking the patients to their final destinations, including Birmingham Children's Hospital.

The government has said patients will receive treatment at an appropriate NHS hospital.

Hundreds of Ukrainians have seen their medical treatment interrupted as Russian forces lay siege to cities and hospitals' supplies dry up.

Many children were evacuated to Poland, from where the Birmingham-bound flight departed following an appeal by Polish authorities for help in caring for them.

Dr Martin English, a consultant oncologist from Birmingham Children's Hospital, who travelled on the plane with the children, said they were "as well as can be expected given the traumas that they have undergone".

He said: "I would hope an interruption [of treatment] of just a few weeks - the time since the start of the war - won't impact on the long-term care.

"But obviously if that were to continue for a few weeks more, and it was to turn into months, for anyone that wasn't able to access ongoing treatment, then the consequences could be grave.

"I'm very proud that our facility in Birmingham will be able to provide expert cancer care for some of those children," he added.

The hospital trust's chief medical officer, Dr Fiona Reynolds, who triaged the children on arrival, said her team was proud to have been able to support the children.

"We have some of the best clinicians in the world, therefore being able to offer even a small number of children the cancer care they so desperately need at a time when they are not only suffering ill health but with the devastation happening in their country, is the very least we can do."

An ambulance service spokesperson praised "incredible teamwork from so many NHS staff to get it all sorted so quickly".

Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]