As a medical doctor, Paulina Bownik has voluntarily been rescuing thousands of refugees in the forests of the Polish-Belarusian border region, often wading through swamps looking for people who need to be warmed and hydrated at -16 degrees:
“The medical backpack weighed about 20 kilos. I had to have things in it for various circumstances. First of all, painkillers. Plus IVs and IV equipment for insertions. Necessarily, the smallest ones, yellow venflons for children, which are also useful for adults in hypothermia, because they have very extravasated veins. Wound disinfectants, bandages and dressings. Since they put up a wall, I had to carry orthopedic equipment with me: slings, orthoses, pads, welts. I also always carried large scissors for cutting clothes stiff from water and blood.”
Witnessing the humanitarian crisis playing out in the so-called exclusion zone between Poland and Belarus has been a profoundly traumatic experience, not only for the refugees, but for her too.