GREENSBORO, N.C. — Samaritan's Purse deployed an emergency field hospital to Ukraine Friday to treat those injured during the Russian invasion.
The North Carolina-based organization loaded a cargo plane with supplies at its Piedmont Triad International Airport hangar Thursday.
More coverage: The latest on the Ukraine-Russia conflict
The plane took off Friday from PTI, headed for Poland, where the hospital will be trucked across the Ukrainian border and set up.
"We hope within very few hours (of arriving) we will be set up and operational and be able to meet their needs as they come to us for help," Dave Philips said.
Philips is the Deputy Director of the Samaritan's Purse Projects Department. The hospital will be capable of treating 100 patients a day.
About 27 disaster response specialists are heading overseas.
"Some are doctors and nurses and medical professionals, others are specialists in medical operations who can help us set up the field hospitals," Philips said. "As well as people who do things like water purification and setting up all the systems that are necessary to deploy an emergency field hospital."
Thirty disaster response specialists are already on the group at Ukraine's borders with Poland, Romania and Moldova and are working with refugees. About a million people have fled due to the war.
"Some people are despondent. They’re stressed. They’ve been traveling and waiting in lines for long periods of time," Philips said. "They’ve undergone the violence of war, and so we’re trying to meet people right where they are and address those needs as they come up."
Samaritan's Purse plans to send another cargo plane next week to set up two medical clinics in areas seeing an influx of refugees. The organization says it's also preparing to distribute 20 tons of food.
Philips said their response ranks among one of the largest for Samaritan's Purse. It's not the first time involving conflict. The most recent was in 2016 when an emergency field hospital was set up in Mosul, Iraq due to ISIS.
"It is such a privilege to be able to come from North Carolina and go right to the heart of a crisis somewhere else in the world and to do that in Jesus‘s name," Philips said.
Philips encourages prayer for the Ukrainian people and for aid workers in the region.
More information about volunteering or donating to Samaritan's Purse can be found on their website.