Ukraine: Pub vehicles used to transport medical supplies

Luke Sturman used his hospitality fleet of vehicles to transport supplies to Ukraine

A pub landlord and his manager used their hospitality vehicles to transport NHS medical supplies that would otherwise be thrown away, to Ukraine.

Luke Sturman runs the Oak House pub in Axbridge, Somerset, along with his manager Marina Zabnocka who is Polish.

He is also a first responder for South West Ambulance and works with NGO Pre-Hospital Care and Aid Worldwide which specialises in immediate medical care.

Mr Sturman said the goods they dropped off arrived in Lviv on Tuesday.

He added there is "surgical equipment, trauma packs, trauma kits for the troops on the front line and for people they are dealing with on the front line".

Paramed CZ has linked with UK based NGO Pre-Hospital Care and Aid in getting aid to Ukraine

Tim Cranton from Melksham, Wiltshire, volunteered to drive the supplies.

He said: "We've got an inflatable shelter here with the generator plus all the necessary equipment to be able to set up an aid post.

"Having spent the last two days in the Ukraine and having come back within the last 24 hours I can tell you there's an awful lot of help that's needed," he added.

Charity workers in Somerset, Wiltshire and Brighton are trying to raise money to help set up a field hospital in Medyka, Poland, which borders Ukraine.

Paramed CZ works with NGO PHCAW in the Ukraine, training medical staff on how to use the donated trauma kits.

The teams are collecting donations to kit out ambulances and get medical kit

Dr Iryna Rybinkina normally works for the NHS as a consultant anaesthetist, but is assisting Smart Medical Aid Foundation, which Paramed CZ is sending supplies to.

For the last two weeks she has been supervising a warehouse full of medical supplies in Ukraine.

Dr Rybinkina said: "The hospitals are desperate, they're on their knees because they got the chronic patients and the hospital gets bombed like we had in Irpin a few days ago."

She said it was destroyed to "complete rubble [and] we had to evacuate".