Canada university provides virtual medical training to Ukraine

McGill's trauma surgery head Tarek Razek told AFP that Ukrainian health care workers face "an unimaginable... very complex" and "stressful" situation, including shortages of medical supplies and damage to facilities.

And due to the scale of the conflict, all health workers in the country -- not just emergency room doctors and nurses -- are being called on to care for the injured, he explained.

In partnership with the school's Steinberg Center for Simulation and Interactive Learning, the Canadian doctors created teaching videos "for basic life support and lifesaving procedures that can be done by non-surgeons," Dan Deckelbaum, director of the center, said in a statement.

Each video is just a few minutes long.

They were shot in a simulated operating room in Montreal demonstrating, for example, how to resuscitate a patient, with Ukrainian narration.

McGill, through its Centre for Global Surgery, had already collaborated with Ukraine on trauma research and medical training over the past decade.

And a surgeon from Japan, Junko Tokuno, had been creating at McGill free and open training modules on trauma management for health care professionals in low- to middle-income countries. She helped film and edit the Ukraine videos.

With "the team, the know-how, and the equipment at our fingertips," it took just 24 hours to create and deliver the videos, said McGill's head of e-learning for health, Tamara Carver.

On Wednesday, 17 people were injured in an apparent Russian air strike on a paediatric and maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

At least 474 civilians have been killed and 861 injured since the start of Russia's assault on its ex-Soviet neighbour, according to the UN, although it believes the real figures to be "considerably higher."