There are 150 children living in this environment, " Adi told me on a crackly mobile phone connection from Belarus. A team of cardiac surgeons have hit the ground running, she said, and will carry out 25 operations this week alone.

We have become their Irish mothers and fathers. It was a scary place to wake up, but this morning it was bursting with love." The previous day, they'd presented Ludmilla Postoyalko, president of Belarus Red Cross, and Markku Niskala, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, with keys of the region's first mobile thyroid monitoring unit in the Belarus capital, where they'd also attended an international conference on a sustainable development strategy for the Chernobylhit areas, which marked the disaster's 20th anniversary.

It was a very sobering and humbling experience coming from a high-powered conference to the mental asylum and getting to the heart of this organization, " Adi said during a break from a tour of the convoy. Ali and I had the aspiration and ambition to drive our own sponsored ambulance. We had a piece of timber put in the back and an airbed, but circumstances overtook us, and we decided our time would be better spent if we flew out to the conference.

The kids came running out to help empty the ambulances when they arrived. This is the reality for children left behind in hospitals, day care centres, orphanages and asylums. This equipment will be saving lives."