Once the bombing started, a single mother and her 4-year-old daughter had just a few hours to flee their home city of Dnipro in east-central Ukraine. Leaving in such a hurry, they weren’t able to refill the medication that the daughter takes to keep her cystic fibrosis (CF) from becoming life-threatening. CF affects multiple organs in the body, often making it difficult to breathe and causing respiratory infections.

Mother and daughter spent five days on the road without the medicine. The young girl’s condition deteriorated day by day. By the time they arrived at the Polish Refugee Center in Przemyśl, the girl’s health was severely compromised. The desperate mother took her daughter to the Red Cross Help Center, where a Hadassah medical team, together with several humanitarian organizations, was staffing a medical clinic for the refugees. Despite the girl’s dire condition, the Hadassah physicians and nurses were able to save her life.

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Photo caption: the 4 years old patient, in her mother’s arm next to Dr. Alexander Gileles Hillel, Hadassah pediatric pulmonologist and sleep disorder expert