A Kingston psychiatric nurse volunteers in war-torn Ukraine

A Kingston nurse has traveled halfway around the world to war-torn Ukraine to volunteer her time and help those directly affected by violent Russian attacks.

Kerri Tadeu is a Registered Psychiatric Nurse and among more than 100 Canadian health care professionals who have headed to Ukraine and bordering Poland to help the thousands of Ukrainians displaced by war.

“I’m in it for the long haul,” said Tadeu.

Tadeu has worked as a nurse for nearly 20 years but the streets of Ukraine are a far cry from her usual environment.

She’s a part of a team of 6 working in a mobile healthcare unit in Koval, Ukraine, located in the northwestern part of the war-torn country.

The team includes nurses, a physician and a translator, all helping those displaced and fleeing the ongoing war.

“Just that eye contact or that knowing that they’ve been heard or that we see them and that we’re willing to sacrifice our time, our love and our energy, it helps, it helps all of us,” said Tadeu.

Tadeu is volunteering with the Canadian Medical Assistance Team, known as CMAT for short.

It’s a grassroots disaster relief organization made up of volunteers that provide relief aid to victims of disasters around the world.

“We’ve sent over 100 medical professionals over the last two months to various points along the borderline with Poland and Ukraine,” said Executive Director of CMAT, Valerie Rzepka.

“We’ve probably treated close to 5,000 patients over that course of time and everyone has been absolutely phenomenal, opening their hearts and providing this care for people that are experiencing the worst experience that anyone could ever experience,” she added.

Volunteers like Tadeu are stationed in Poland but are crossing the border into Ukraine daily.

All the volunteers have paid their own way to Ukraine, many of them taking vacation time away from their own jobs to help.

Tadeu says the resilience of the Ukrainian people has inspired her in ways she didn’t expect.

“I asked this gentleman yesterday that’s been there since the beginning and seen 15,000 people everyday at the border what brought him there and he said: ‘to take care of his own people’. They have this saying, ‘Slava Ukrainie, Glory to Ukraine,” she said through tears.

Most Volunteers with CMAT are spending two weeks at a time in Ukraine and two more mobile teams expected to arrive in Ukraine soon.

Tadeu says she hopes to inspire Canadians who can’t necessarily uproot their lives like she has, to donate to organizations like CMAT and support the now desperately needed humanitarian work going on in Ukraine, spreading Canadian caring along the way.