Lessons from Ukraine: learning about organisational readiness

For the first time, the World Extreme Medicine Fund (WEMF) will be speaking at The Emergency Services Show on the new Resilience360 stage, supporting the show’s wider pledge to raise the standard of urgent care and response across emergency services.

I co-founded WEMF with Luca Alfatti. Formerly known as Medics4Ukraine, WEMF is a non-political, independent organisation committed to strengthening local resilience through immediate response and long-term medical support.

Since 2022, the charity has supported frontline and humanitarian medical initiatives throughout the Ukraine conflict, combining operational medicine expertise with practical logistics and invaluable field deployment experience. From trauma care and frontline training to logistics and public health resources, the charity’s highly skilled team responds at pace where healthcare systems are overwhelmed or under threat.

For our session, we will be joined by Richard Lewis, WEMF Chief Operating Officer to share lessons learned during four years of delivering humanitarian aid, frontline medical capability and trauma training across Ukraine.

“As a result of our team’s critical life saving work in Ukraine, we’ve had a unique opportunity to observe how people and organisations adapt, learn and maintain capability under sustained pressure. Using insights gained from the team’s critical casualty care, our session will explain how these invaluable lessons can best be applied to practical organisational readiness in the UK.

“Resilience isn’t something organisations can simply switch on when a major incident happens; it is built beforehand through exemplary leadership, training, interoperability and through people’s ability to learn and adapt.”

Richard Lewis, Chief Operating Officer, World Extreme Medicine.

WEMF, alongside collaboration with NATO and distinguished international partners including the Command of the Medical Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education has provided a unique perspective on how organisations perform and adapt under sustained operational pressure.

Ukraine has become one of the world’s most important learning environments for emergency medicine, leadership and organisational resilience. As the nature of conflict, crisis and major incidents continues to evolve, so too must the way emergency services prepare, adapt and respond.

Speaking at the 20th Emergency Services Show is another key event in WEMF’s milestone year. 2026 also marks four years since the charity’s inception which has seen the team deliver nearly £5m in trauma aid, train over 1,700 frontline medical personnel and deliver over 400 training days in Ukraine.

This work, recognised with three humanitarian medals for members of the WEMF team, demonstrates the real-world impact of building sustainable, locally informed capability rather than dependency. Our session will be a unique opportunity to highlight how our frontline experience can best be applied to UK emergency preparedness.

Join the WEMF team at The Emergency Services Show where they will be speaking on the Resilience360 stage on 17 September at 1230. Register for your free ticket here.