Our employees in Poland have been actively supporting the campaign of the Polish Society for Pediatric Oncology and Hematology and Professor Wojciech Młynarski of the Medical University of Lodz for several days now, organizing medical transports for children from Ukraine so that they can continue their treatment in Poland: Patients in need of a hematopoietic stem cell transplant cannot be treated and it is too risky to start conditioning a patient. The risk of having to leave the hospital due to attacks is far too high. That is why especially our donor center in Poland, has started to bring children with cancer from Ukraine to Poland to be transplanted. But since the end of last week, it has become increasingly apparent that the Polish pediatric clinics are overloaded.

Request on Friday evening

Last Friday evening, we finally received a request asking whether we could organize the transport of children from Ukraine to German clinics over the weekend. Our team from Transplant Center Services (TCS) and our colleagues from Poland immediately started making phone calls, doing research and organizing the transfer. But how do the hospitals obtain the medical records? Are the patients allowed to enter the country without passports? After discussions with the Charité in Berlin, the Federal Border Guard and colleagues in Poland, it was finally decided: DKMS would bring seven patient children between the ages of five and 16 from Poland, where they were stranded in a hospital in the Polish city of Małogoszcz during their escape, to hospitals in Frankfurt, Mainz and Heidelberg. A Polish driver takes the children and their guardians - 15 people in all - to the German-Polish border in Görlitz. There, a cab company takes over and drives the patients to clinics across Germany in two minibuses.

On Monday night all patients finally arrived at their destination hospitals. As the search for suitable stem cells and the organization of a transplantation has already been initiated for some of the patients, it is now important to obtain all relevant medical documents as quickly as possible and to re-plan.

However, the most important thing for the time being is: Seven seriously sick children are now safe and their treatment can continue. But there will be many more Ukrainian patients who urgently need a place in hospital and our collective support.

As an international nonprofit organization, we collaborate across national borders, and we strongly believe in diversity, tolerance and humanity. We hope for a fast return to peace for all people affected by this war and for the sake of humanity.