Immediate assistance
Overnight, medical teaching departments across Ukraine were repurposed into field hospitals to cope with the overwhelming civilian and military casualties in rapidly degrading conditions and alarmingly dwindling supplies. There are several areas where universities from outside can help significantly.
First of all is offering technical assistance. Many of the doctors now working in emergency and trauma are specialists from other fields, working under extreme pressure. The ability to consult specialists in trauma, burns and other disaster/emergency areas could provide valuable, lifesaving guidance to medics working under extreme pressure.
There is also a need for specialists in: humanitarian crises and disasters; investigation and international law; telecommunications and infrastructure, among other areas that will be urgently needed in the coming days.
We have contacted our partners in Ukraine who have told us their immediate needs, so that we can use a customised bibliometric database comprising 300,000 authors to identify specialists in areas of expertise among our contact base outside Ukraine.