Ukraine: ITW of Prof. François Pons, La Chaîne de l’Espoir volunteer, on RFI

Echoing the three-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Prof. François Pons, visceral and thoracic surgeon, former military officer and former director of the Val-de-Grâce School, holder of the Chair of War Surgery and volunteer with La Chaîne de l’Espoir, was a guest on RFI‘s ” Priorité Santé ” program.

In an interview with Caroline Paré, Prof. François Pons talks about the training offered by our association to Ukrainian surgeons in the care of war-wounded, based on Surgical Damage Control. This is an emergency medical approach aimed at rapidly stabilizing severely wounded patients to prevent serious complications, and implemented before more comprehensive treatments are carried out.

In “Priorité Santé”, Prof. François Pons looks back on his experience in the Ukraine and France:

” My course focuses on surgical Damage Control. This technique is well known to military surgeons, and also to civilian surgeons working in trauma centers. But civilian surgeons who don’t usually work in emergencies, and the same is true in France, know little or nothing about these principles. […] Because we realized that in certain hospitals that don’t usually receive emergencies, this was little known, and it’s exactly the same problem in Ukraine, so the course I created was targeted at civilian surgeons, but a certain number of military surgeons still came to attend. “

In 2024, with the support of the Crisis and Support Center of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, 66 Ukrainian surgeons were trained in Damage Control Surgery, and these trained surgeons will in turn train other surgeons, and so on.

Watch thefull interview with Prof. François Pons on the “Priorité Santé” program: https: //youtu.be/nKkyuQb4Un0?si=vJsOJ7itVZOFsZ5f