Donated north-east ambulances in action on Ukraine front line

Ambulances donated from north-east England were deployed to the aftermath of missile strikes in Ukraine just hours after being handed over.

Bad weather prevented hundreds of boxes of medical supplies donated from hospitals and GP surgeries being flown to Poland.

Instead, the supplies were loaded into the four donated vehicles and driven.

Eight volunteers drove 1,400 miles across six countries to get to the Poland-Ukraine border on Saturday.

The emergency medical supplies were specifically aimed at treating those injured in conflict and were donated by health trusts in the North East.

Those donations that could not be flown to Poland directly were loaded on to the former North East Ambulance Service vehicles which left Gateshead at 04:00 GMT on Thursday.

After a delay at Folkestone, they arrived in France at 07:00 GMT on Friday and then drove through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland before reaching their destination on Saturday afternoon.

Head of transport at QE Gateshead NHS Trust Paul Bowmaker, who led the operation, said: "We knew the ambulances were needed and after a long journey, taking two-hour shifts at the wheel, we arrived at a warehouse in Lublin on the border and handed over the medical aid to the charity.

"The ambulances were handed to the medical director of the Ukrainian Ambulance Service and by 02:00 CET, the following morning [Sunday] they were in service on the front line."

The volunteers had no way of knowing that their vehicles and supplies would be used so soon after they were delivered.

Just hours a few hours after the Ukrainian Ambulance Service took delivery, Russian forces launched a missile attack at strike on the Yavoriv training base, near a major crossing point into Poland.

About 30 cruise missiles were fired at the base outside the city of Lviv early on Sunday, killing 35 people.

Mr Bowmaker said the team they had no idea their intervention would be so timely: "It was eerily quiet as we approached the border - but we didn't know about the potential danger.

"We knew aid was needed and we knew we had to get the first aid kits through to help people on the front line."

He said urgent medical supplies are continuing to be donated, along with a further four North East Ambulance Service vehicles which will soon leave, once again, for the Ukrainian border.

Follow BBC North East & Cumbria on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected].