Baby Born Underground As Missile Devastates Hospital

Taking cover in a bunker under direct Russian missile fire, the staff of the maternity ward at Zhytomyr’s Pavlusenko hospital focused on the pregnant woman who had started giving birth on the floor of the bomb shelter after the shock of a nearby explosion sent her into labour.

- Bel Trew

Just moments earlier, air raid sirens had sounded in the Ukrainian city, sending dozens of patients scrambling underground. Those who were too ill to move – including intubated Covid-19 patients – had to be left upstairs. Designated staff members risked their lives to stay with them.

Hospital officials told The Independent that an airstrike in Zhytomyr on Tuesday had struck a military base just 200 metres away from the facility, seriously damaging multiple wards. Among those worst hit was the maternity wing, where 45 women and 15 newborn babies were being cared for at the time.

“At 10.30pm [on Tuesday night] the sirens warned us that there was incoming fire, so we ran to the shelter,” Dr Olena Volodymyrivna, head of the maternity wing, said by phone from inside a bunker where she was taking cover in response to another air raid siren. “It was horrific, all the building was trembling.

“I felt like the ground was being ripped from underneath our feet. All the kids were crying, all of them, and mothers, many of whom had just given birth, were terrified.”

When the explosion sent one woman at full term into labour in the middle of the bombardment, the anaesthesiologists, neonatologists and midwives sprang into action, she said. “It was the only place we could safely deliver her baby. She gave birth to a baby girl at 6am underground,” Dr Volodymyrivna said.