Four Lithuanian dentists are heading to Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Blue/Yellow, a Vilnius-based NGO raising funds for Ukraine, said on Thursday.
The dentists will be working in the Kharkiv region for a week and are planning to return home from the first mission in late June.
The NGO said it would start organising regular Blue/Yellow medical missions to help Ukraine deal with the shortage of medical personnel.
As part of the first pilot mission to Ukraine in May, a Lithuanian volunteer medical team worked in territories recaptured from Russia and sought to identify the medical specialties most in demand, according to the organisation.
“In Ukraine, both civilians and injured soldiers do not have access to some of the essential medical services, because some medical workers are fighting on the frontline,” said Blue/Yellow Director Laura Paukštė.
“In Lithuania, we have volunteer medical professionals who are willing to help, so we will organise regular missions to help Ukrainians,” she said.
Auristida Gerliakienė, head of the Lithuanian Medical Movement, helped to put together the team of dentists – three women and one man – for the first Blue/Yellow Medical mission.
Their task is to help local people and look at what subsequent Blue/Yellow Medical missions might need.
“The medical workers’ desire to help is stronger than their fear of risks. And these four are not the only ones who have volunteered to go to Ukraine,” Gerliakienė said.
“We have more people among medical professionals who are willing to help Ukrainians. In cooperation with Blue/Yellow, we will be able to organise these missions more often, as the need for help is enormous,” she added.
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