Humanitarian flight on its way to Poland with much needed medical supplies for Ukraine

An Air Canada Dreamliner in Toronto was loaded with much needed medical supplies for Ukraine Wednesday night.

Some of the cargo was collected by the city's Ukrainian community, who spent donations buying over-the-counter medicine.

Slav Lukan, a Ukrainian living in Toronto, said people in his community just want to do whatever they can to help.

“It just feels amazing. The most important [thing], there’s lots of critical medications and supplies in there [the plane] and they’re going to be there in eight hours, in Poland, another four to five hours, they’ll be in a local hospital, just think about this.”

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Global Medic is playing a major role in the humanitarian flight. The organization’s founder Rahul Singh said much needed trauma supplies for the wounded are on board as are essential medicines.

“People that are fleeing the fighting and trying to get to safety, they run with just the clothes on their back, they get to a train station, they move. Chances are, they have a medical problem. High blood pressure, diabetes, they don’t have their pills,” he told CTV News Toronto on the tarmac at Pearson International Airport.

If people become sick without their medicine, they could end up in hospital. But Singh said the hospitals are already full tending to the war wounded.

Global Medic is also sending 1,000,000 water purification kits to Ukrainian cities where their water supply has been shut off by the Russian invaders.

The U.S.-based Project C.U.R.E is also involved in this flight. Melisa Esposti said medical supplies are in great need in Ukraine and Poland.

“We work in 125 countries and most of the medical supplies that are on this plane tonight are from Project C.U.R.E.,” Esposti said.

Four separate organization are involved in the flight including, Air Canada, Airlink, Project C.U.R.E. and GlobalMedic.

Kevin O’Connor, VP of system’s operations for Air Canada, said much planning went into the flight.

“Can you imagine all the aid that is trying to flow into Poland right now? You have to coordinate a departure out of Canada and arrive in Warsaw, Poland. Can the airport handle it? Is there enough area because there is aid flowing in from around the world?”

The flight is set to land in Warsaw by mid-morning Thursday and within hours, surgical supplies will be moving to where they are needed most: a hospital in Lviv, Ukraine.