Report from the Toulouse collection center: what do Ukrainians really need?
The mayor of Toulouse and president of Toulouse Métropole Jean-Luc Moudenc went on Friday March 25 to the collection center for Ukraine, which has been open for a week. It is located in Hall 9 of the Parc des Expositions on the Ile du Ramier. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. For the coordinators, the urgency is to obtain medical equipment.
Anne-Lise, a liberal nurse in Toulouse, has been helping for 10 days at the collection center for Ukraine in Hall 9 on Ile du Ramier. “Previously, I was in Bruguières, where the first collection center was set up before being relocated here”.
She is one of the volunteers who was able to exchange, Friday March 25, with the mayor of Toulouse Jean-Luc Moudenc who came to “greet their work and their mobilization”. This, since February 24, the day of the invasion of the Russian army in Ukraine.
“What saves lives”
Hall 9 is now a warehouse where equipment transits, primarily intended for war victims. “Anything in the area of care for the injured, because that’s what saves lives,” prioritizes Myla Popenko, coordinator of the Free Ukraine association, which runs the Toulouse collection center with the Emmaüs association. Secondly, there are hygiene products, because it prevents people from catching diseases, and that can happen when you stay five days in a bomb shelter. And also children’s food. What we lack a lot today are tourniquets”.
64 families staying with Toulouse residents
Medical equipment is indeed in high demand. This ranges from dressings, infusion products, small surgical equipment, to technical dressings, wheelchairs, surgery room furniture. Medicines and clothing are not accepted. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, recalls Myla Popenko, “we have been able to send two vans and three semi-trailers of 120 m3. These are Ukrainian transporters who cross the Polish border and take risks”.
This collection center is in addition to the numerous humanitarian and financial aid schemes (190,000 euros), set up by the city of Toulouse, twinned with the Ukrainian capital kyiv and which now welcomes 250 Ukrainians who have fled the war, including 64 families staying with Toulouse residents.