Doctors in Kyiv were performing open-heart surgery on a 14-year-old boy on Wednesday when the lights suddenly went off. Russian missiles were raining down on the Ukrainian capital city that day when the Kyiv Heart Institute unexpectedly lost light, power and running water.
In a video posted by Dr Borys Todurov – who works as a cardiac surgeon at the Kyiv Heart Centre – medics were plunged into darkness midway and carried out a life-saving operation on a small child with help of torchlight. Doctors were midway through a cardiopulmonary bypass surgery when the lights went off due to a missile strike on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Ukrainian Doctors Perform Child's Heart Surgery in Darkness
The nearly 2-minute-long video showed a team of surgeons continuing the operation with limited light. Other than the surgeons' headlamps, the darkness covered the room. The bright overhead light that is typically seen in the operating room was also not powered.
According to Newsweek, one of the doctors in the video said, "Nobody knows what happened, but the operating room completely blacked out," the doctor said, telling Russians to "rejoice," sarcastically.
"Today it's a child on the operating table. And power was completely lost in the middle of the surgery. Good job. Very humane people," he added.
Watch the video here.
Illia Yemets, another surgeon at the hospital, later confirmed the baby survived, ABC reports.
The blackout happened amid heavy Russian shelling in Ukraine, which knocked out electricity and running water across much of the capital and other parts of the country. Some people even resorted to holding water bottles under drain pipes in order to collect rainwater to drink.
National power grid operator Ukrenergo said Friday that about 30 per cent of electricity supplies were still out, writes CBC. At least 21 people have been killed in the attacks since Wednesday.
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