A Letter from Ukraine

Ken Herrmann; Kmetyuk Yaroslav

doi:10.2967/jnumed.122.264288

March 30th, 2022

Dear All,

My name is Ken Herrmann and I’m a nuclear medicine physician from Germany. I also chair the EANM Oncology and Theranostics Committee.

I am reaching out to you today in my role as Chair of Nuclear Medicine in Essen. We are all shocked about the invasion of your country and the current events in Ukraine. As a native of East Berlin, I am emotionally affected and am reminded of my personal history.

Accordingly, I want to reach out to offer any help for you and/or your families. Please let us know if there is anything we can do.

Currently our hospital is accommodating a number of Ukraine health-care professionals and I want to offer more to help. Please let us know what we can do.

All the best, and we sincerely hope that the war will be over soon.

Ken

Patient treatment in war times. Photograph taken in the waiting room of Clinical Hospital “Feofaniya” in Kyiv, Ukraine (March 2022).

March 30th, 2022

Dear Ken,

Thank you for your support!

I am the head of the department of the hospital in Kyiv where PET/CT is performed. I have been living at work since the first day of the war. We provide care to patients with a minimum number of staff. Because of frequent Russian bombings in the area where I live, I have to spend the night in the basement of my clinic. I am also in charge of the radiation therapy department. We did not stop irradiating patients for a single day. PET/CT had to be stopped due to lack of staff. Last week, colleagues were able to move to an area near the clinic and resume operation of the cyclotron and laboratory. I hope we will succeed with the production of FDG soon.

Many cancer patients have remained in Kyiv and need medical care. We do our job, although it is not easy. There are lots of new challenges. Every time the city is bombarded or covered with missile strikes, patients have to go down to the basement on an alarm signal. But it is clear that we cannot interrupt ongoing radiation therapy. I decided for myself that when we start PET, we will not interrupt the scan either. We will not let patients down who have already been injected with radiopharmaceuticals so as not to irradiate others. I understand that this looks ridiculous while under the risk of a nuclear attack.

This war takes the lives of thousands of Ukrainians. Adults and children. We are fighting for our freedom. We are fighting for the lives of our people.

P.S. Thanks for a quick response of EANM on my official letter as Vice-president of the Ukrainian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In the beginning of March, we asked to terminate Russia’s EANM membership and provide support to our country.

Best regards,

Pray for us

Kmetyuk Yaroslav MD, PhD

Head of Radiosurgery Center,

Clinical Hospital “Feofaniya”

03680, Kyiv, Ukraine

21, Zabolotnogo st.

Kmetyuk{at}feofaniya.org