Quebec doctor helping refugees on Ukraine-Poland border
Posted March 11, 2022 11:56 am.
Last Updated March 11, 2022 6:16 pm.
Normally, Quebec doctor Julien Auger is caring for patients at Saint-Jérôme hospital, about 45 kilometers north of Montreal. Now, he’s at a refugee camp in Poland on the Ukrainian border, treating people fleeing the ongoing Russian invasion.
“I’m glad that I was able to find this medical tent and then be able to make a difference as a doctor with my skills as a doctor,” says Dr. Auger.
A week ago, he decided to pick up and leave his family to join in on the humanitarian effort.
(Credit: Dr. Julien Auger / handout)
“Seeing the footage of everything that was happening, the interviews with the people on-site and not being able to do anything – that was the worst for me,” Dr. Auger says. “I had trouble sleeping because of that because I knew that if I was there, maybe I could at least try to do something, at least try to help.”
#WATCH: “I knew that if I was there, maybe I could at least try to do something,” says @DrJujubinks a Quebec doctor helping refugees at a camp on the Poland-Ukraine border. He says it was a tough decision to leave his family behind.
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The 35-year-old father of two under five years old says it wasn’t an easy decision to head towards the war, and one he made with his wife, Mira.
“She was kind enough to let me go,” he says. “And she’s she’s doing a sacrifice herself, just letting me go and staying with the children.”
Dr. Auger’s initial plan was to help on the ground in Ukraine. But that plan quickly changed.
“There was more and more news about the hospital shellings, civilians being killed in Ukraine, the humanitarian corridor not being respected,” he says. “So I decided, being a father of two, that I would not cross to Ukraine.”
Staying in Poland instead, he’s found work in Hrebenne, a small town in the Tomaszów Lubelski region, where the refugee camp team is now staffed with doctors around the clock.
“There’s a medical tent here, They needed a doctor.”
Dr. Auger is now lending a hand where upwards of 100,000 Ukrainian refugees are crossing every day.
“Sometimes on their feet in cold temperatures,” he says. “They’re most often in public transportation.”
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He says many are vulnerable people crossing: women and children or the elderly. After sometimes harrowing journeys, some people arrive in distress.
(Credit: Dr. Julien Auger / handout)
“Small things that you would see in a walk-in clinic, but it can go pretty bad, pretty fast because people are dehydrated and they really often don’t have access to their medication,” he says.
Dr. Auger plans to help at least until the end of March, in hopes that the Russian army will stop advancing.
“Apart from that, I just want to go back to my normal life. But ideally when they don’t need me anymore here.”
