The blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag has become a common sight in Key West as footage of the war-torn nation continues to dominate news coverage.
Key Westers are famous for their fierce support of friends, neighbors — and strangers — who are struggling.
The island comes together to raise money, pay medical expenses, fund scholarships, cook meals, provide transportation, donate clothes, repair homes or fill any other need in someone’s life.
Now, a Key West doctor has found a way to help the people of Ukraine, who have been forced from their devastated homes and shattered lives.
Dr. Bruce Guerdan, who has worked nights in the emergency room at Lower Keys Medical Center for more than 20 years, is preparing for his fourth trip to Poland, where he volunteers to provide medical treatment to Ukrainian refugees who come across the border to the town of Przemysl, Poland.
“The Polish people deserve the Nobel Prize,” Guerdan told the Keys Weekly over a recent lunch in Key West. “They have taken Ukrainians into their homes by the millions.”
Guerdan has made three two-week trips to Przemysl, Poland, where Father Marek Machala, a Roman Catholic priest, has established a refugee center that has aided an estimated 2 million Ukrainians.
Przemyśl, Poland is just a few kilometers from the Ukraine border, and the train station at the border has refugees arriving by the millions.
Guerdan and other volunteers work in the medical clinic that Machala established to help the refugees.
“They’re all women and children, because all able-bodied men are required to remain in Ukraine,” Guerdan said. “If the men aren’t fighting, then they’re working in other ways to keep the country operating. It was strange when I first arrived at the medical clinic in Poland, because you’re sort of expecting to treat war injuries, but mainly we’re providing primary care to the refugees, getting them the prescriptions they need.”
Not surprisingly, there’s also a staggering amount of depression among the refugees, many of whom don’t know whether they’ll see their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons — or their homes — again.
Machala will be in Key West through June 11 on a fundraising trip for his refugee center, Pastoral Family Care Foundation. He’ll say Mass at the Basilica of St. Mary Star of the Sea on Sunday, June 11 at 10:30 a.m. And at the end of the Mass, Guerdan will present the priest with a Distinguished Service Award from the American Academy of Disaster Medicine.
Donations can be made to Machala’s Ukrainian refugee center through the Archdiocese of Miami and at the Mass on June 11.
