Polish medics at unique facility help evacuate Ukraine's wounded soldiers
Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, about 70km from the western Ukrainian border, in southeastern Poland, was a small regional airport before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
After that, Ukraine closed its airspace, and now the airport has become the key strategic and logistical hub for Nato support to Ukraine. About 95% of arms and other material assistance flows through the airport, which is guarded by Patriot anti-missile batteries.
Rzeszów-Jasionka is also the departure point for Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, to travel abroad.
Poland has been one of the strongest supporters of its neighbour Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Apart from being a conduit for the supply of weapons and other materiel to Ukraine, Rzeszów-Jasionka is also a hub for humanitarian assistance to the embattled country, including the evacuation of war-wounded.
Key to that effort is the Polish Center for International Aid (PCPM) Medevac Hub Jasionka, which established a 40-bed hospital close to the Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in a converted warehouse in August 2022.
Mateusz Stojanowicz, the medical coordinator of the hub, explains that its function is to receive patients who have travelled by road, mainly from the frontlines in the east, through the western Ukrainian city of Lviv — a major humanitarian hub for Ukraine — and to stabilise them before they are flown from Rzeszow-Jasionka to hospitals across Europe for further treatment.
More than 4,000 patients and their families have been transported, most to Germany, followed by Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and 12 other countries. Medevac Hub Jasionka is sponsored by the European Union (EU) and is part of the EU's Civil Protection Pool, which comprises 28 states, some of which, like Norway and Turkey, are not members of the EU.
Stojanowicz says the number of daily patients is irregular because it is dependent on the fighting in Ukraine. The hub can manage as many as 50 in a day, although the average has been around 30 to 40 per week. The two wards of the hub together have 40 beds, with room for about 25 more stretchers if necessary.
The main purpose of the hub is to prepare patients for onward travel to Europe.
'We are keeping patients fit to fly,' says Adam Szyszka, the medevac team leader, noting that sometimes patients arrive with difficulties, dressings need to be changed, infections treated and unexpected lapses managed.
'And we have less than 24 hours, and we may have to deal with 50 in one time.'
A logistical feat
Normally, patients stay here no longer than a day before being moved to the special Medevac aircraft of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) to be transported to hospitals across Europe.
This regular SAS Boeing 737 passenger plane has been converted into a flying hospital, with medical equipment, around 20 hospital beds — some of which are for intensive care patients — and around 30 seats, though the configuration can be changed. Medical personnel from the Norwegian Armed Forces provide the treatment and care on board the aircraft.
The medevac team does not take patients requiring critical care.
'They need to be able to breathe by themselves,' says Stojanowicz. 'If they are critical, they are taken straight to the aircraft, which has six ICU beds.'
If the condition of a patient deteriorates en route to the hub, it will call 911 and order an ambulance or use one of its own to take the patient to a regular hospital in Rzeszów.
'Our job is to be a buffer for the local healthcare system,' says Adams. 'Without this place, these 3,000-plus people would have to go to the local hospitals.'
The medevac team has three regular ambulances as well as an ambulance bus donated by Norway that can take four supine patients and 11 sitting people.
Szyszka says the ambulance bus cuts down on the number of medical staff needed to accompany patients and saves space on the tarmac of the busy airport. Instead of 11 ambulances, one bus can transport 11 patients. The bus has a 220-volt power output, which covers all medical equipment they might need.
A tent can be attached to extend the capacity of the hospital if the hospital is overstretched or has to be evacuated for any reason.
'It was made just for this purpose,' says Szyszka. 'No one was expecting that during the 21st century in the middle of geographic Europe, we were going to face war again, the same like 100 years ago. We have to adapt a crisis management system to the current situation.'
The hub is equipped with enough water and generation capacity to be self-sufficient for three days, in case it's cut off from the water and power grid.
Trauma services
Although the medevac hub treats mainly wounded soldiers, it also handles children suffering from cancer who are being transferred abroad, in large part because of Russia's bombing of hospitals in Ukraine. They are strictly segregated from the war casualties to prevent infections, as the immune systems of cancer patients are compromised.
Psychological counselling is also a major part of the hub's activities, including dealing with the trauma of injury. The Jasionka medevac hub is often the first place where wounded soldiers meet their relatives after their injuries, which is traumatic for all.
The emergency medical team tries to prepare the patients psychologically for the countries they are travelling to by providing them with a small library that includes books written in Ukraine about those countries.
Szyszka says the team made a big breakthrough by hiring a psychologist from Ukraine.
Patients increasing
Stojanowicz says the number of patients is accelerating. Like most others, they thought this would be a quick war, but they are seeing more patients on average this year than last year.
The team is part of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) global emergency medical team system. 'And we are the only WHO team certified in Poland. We have more than 150 medics,' says Szyszka.
He adds that the PCPM Jasionka Medevac hub is 'unique in Europe … [and] … never before anything like this exists in the world'.
PCPM performs three main activities: development aid, humanitarian aid and medical relief assistance, as the Jasionka medevac hub is doing. The WHO emergency medical team (EMT) initiative was conceived to deal mainly with single events such as earthquakes or floods.
'The EMT initiative was designed to provide medical assistance for two weeks, or maximum two rotations per two weeks, one month only.'
'After an earthquake, for instance, with buildings collapsing causing injuries, after one month there is nothing left for medics to do.'
However, this wartime emergency had been going on for three years, turning it into 'the longest EMT mission in the world, in the history of the WHO EMT initiative'.
Whereas the emergency medical team can roughly predict the number of casualties from disasters such as earthquakes, war is unpredictable.
'One day we can have a lower number of patients … and the next week will be a huge peak,' says Szyszka.
Szyszka notes, proudly, that the emergency medical team on duty at any moment — one doctor, two nurses, two paramedics, two ambulance drivers, one psychologist, one pharmacist, an interpreter, admin officer, logistician, hub medical coordinator and hub information coordinator — is at all times ready to deal with an influx of up to 50 people. DM
Peter Fabricius visited Poland, Czechia and Ukraine in June 2025 on an African journalists' study tour sponsored by those three countries and the European Union.
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