A COUPLE from Milton Combe have travelled more than 1,500 miles to take donations collected by villagers and other locals to a Ukrainian hospital caring for children injured in the war-torn country.

Nurse Tracey Halton and her husband Dan, representing Plymouth Ukraine Medical Aid (PUMA), travelled to the city of Uzhhorod in the western part of Ukraine. They took food, clothes, hygiene products and medicines for the children being treated at the hospital and to send to children caught up in the conflict further east.

A ward sister Derriford Hospital, Tracey said the trip had been an eye-opener, with children being treated for shrapnel wounds being among those being cared for at the hospital.

‘Most of us are from Milton Combe, there’s myself and one of the paediatricians, a retired research fellow, myself and my colleague,’ she said. ‘We collected aid and a van was very kindly donated by a local company and we drove out and took humanitarian aid which was full of equipment donated by the local community. We have a little village hall in Milton Combe and we went to them and said can you fundraise for us? It is really a tiny village but we managed to raise £1,500.’

The money raised by the fundraiser, a folk night at the village hall, paid for the trip.

Tracey wasn’t originally going to go on the trip which is the third one which PUMA had undertaken this year. When another person on the team had to have emergency surgery in Prague, she stepped in – flying out to Prague in Poland to join the rest of the team. During her trip she met celebrated Ukrainian paramedic Elena Mosyichuck, who is working to save children in conflict zones and raise awareness of how bombing is affecting people there.

‘Her husband is still in the Donbass [Ukrainian region in the east which is being shelled by Russia] and the message is to get children out into Europe because they are then safe from bullets,’said Tracey, who said the trip had made her very aware just The children’s hospital in Uzhhorod has no air conditioning and is in need of equipment. ‘They were very grateful for what we took,’ she added.