Russia-Ukraine war: Arizona nurse works with orphaned, sick children; describes hiding in bomb shelters

Arizona nurse worked with orphaned, sick children during stint in Poland, Ukraine amid Russian invasion

An Arizona nurse spent several weeks in Poland and Ukraine helping children get medical care. Many of them are orphans and their caregivers died. FOX 10's Irene Snyder reports.

PHOENIX - An Arizona nurse spent weeks over in Poland and Ukraine helping refugees and orphans get medical help. She's now back in the states and sharing her story.

Some of the images she shared with FOX 10 are heartbreaking. She says they had air raid sirens going off while they were volunteering. They had to drop everything and run to bomb shelters. This is the reality that people in Ukraine are dealing with every day.

"There's just a tremendous amount of destruction, devastation, but also these people are really resilient," said Janet Semanova, a nurse practitioner.

Semenova has witnessed first hand the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

"People waiting days to cross the border into Poland with babies, children, infants, and we heard stories of women literally giving birth while waiting in line to get over the border," she said.

Semanova flew from Arizona to Poland back in March with a medical team, another nurse, and two doctors. They were supposed to only volunteer in Poland, but saw there was a greater need for help on the front lines in Ukraine.

"There are people who were shell shocked, and had come over from Kyiv and other areas that had been really bombed, and they're petrified, and we had a woman who ran up to us. She was so scared. She wanted to hand over her child because she was petrified there was going to be bombs, and she didn't know where the shelter was."

Semanova spent weeks in the country with an aerial recovery group, handing out first aid kits, distributing supplies to hospitals, and treating sick children. Many of the children, she says, are orphans. In some cases, their caregivers have already been killed.

"As you can imagine, the kids that are coming had been sitting in bomb shelters for days, sometimes almost weeks at a time and had been under tremendous amounts of stress and were having PTSD and also just regular pediatric type conditions like coughs and cold."

Despite all this destruction, she says the Ukrainian people haven't lost hope.

"Most of the Ukrainians that we met and spoke with did not want to leave Ukraine. They want to remain in Ukraine. They want to maintain their lifestyle and are hoping to return."

Semanova is back in the states, but she is hoping to still help out by sending over donations to the teams on the ground.

If you'd like to donate, contact janet@travelbta.com