Pregnant mom in photo dies, baby too
A pregnant woman, her face pale, lies on a stretcher. Her left hip is covered in blood as she is rushed out of a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which had just been hit by an airstrike.
The gripping picture, captured by photographer Evgeniy Maloletka for The Associated Press, encapsulated the toll on civilians of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It was shared, and the strike condemned, around the world — but little was known about the woman herself.
Now, the AP reports that the woman and her baby died in horrific conditions in the aftermath of the attack — arriving for surgery with her pelvis crushed and hip detached.
Surgeon Timur Marin told the AP that medics delivered the baby via caesarean section but that the infant showed “no signs of life.”
The woman reportedly told medics to “kill me now” when she realized that she was losing her baby.
The woman's surgeon said attempts were made for “more than 30 minutes” to resuscitate her but in the end, she and her baby “both died.”
Her body was picked up from the hospital, medics told the AP, but they were not able to to record the woman's name.
The woman is part of a civilian death toll from the war in Ukraine that the United Nations puts at 596, although it said it “believes that the actual figures are considerably higher.”
The woman's story illustrates the perilous situation facing those who are pregnant in Ukraine, where at least 31 attacks on healthcare facilities or equipment have been documented by the World Health Organization since the start of Russia's assault on Feb. 24.
According to the United Nations, “80,000 Ukrainian women are expected to give birth in the next three months while oxygen and medical supplies, including for the management of pregnancy complications, are running dangerously low.”
In Mariupol, a southern port in Ukraine that officials say has been under Russian bombardments for days, the maternity hospital was hit on Wednesday.