October 23, 2025
The Golden Hour of Trauma is the backbone of emergency medicine. It’s a simple concept with life-or-death consequences: get a critically injured patient from the point of injury to a surgical operating room within 60 minutes, and their chances of survival increase dramatically.
This window exists because the human body can only compensate for severe trauma for so long. Blood loss, shock, and tissue damage accelerate with every passing minute. In a peacetime trauma system, helicopters lift patients to hospitals, ambulances race through protected streets, and surgical teams stand ready. The goal is always the same: beat the clock.
In Ukraine, that clock has stopped.
Evacuation from the point of injury can take 24 hours — sometimes more. The reason is as strategic as it is brutal: pervasive drone warfare has created complete transparency across the battlefield. Every movement is watched. Every vehicle is a target.
A 20-kilometer (12 miles) “kill zone” extends from the front line, where constant drone surveillance—including night-vision-equipped drones—makes rapid evacuation nearly impossible. Helicopter medevac is out of the question. Ambulances can’t move freely. Instead, the wounded wait under fire, and evacuation happens only in darkness, using low-profile methods that take hours, not minutes.
In that agonizing span of time between injury and surgery, everything matters: bleeding control, infection prevention, shock management, and the steady hands of medics, nurses, and surgeons who refuse to let that fragile line break.
This is why training at every level—from the trench to the stabilization point to the trauma hospital—has become the difference between life and death. Expertise must exist everywhere, because time no longer rescues the wounded. People do.
“Critical medical aid must be pushed towards the wounded for immediate stabilization, as swift extraction is near impossible. Organizations like GRM provide this dedicated, life-saving training, which is a critical factor for significantly improving the prognosis for the courageous Ukrainian soldiers defending the values of freedom.” – Ukrainian Emergency Medicine Surgeon
From Defenders’ Day in Ukraine to Veterans Day in the US, our goal is to raise $24,000 in 24 days — $1,000 for every hour it can take to reach lifesaving surgery.
Your support trains and equips the medics, nurses, and surgeons who hold the line when help is a day away.
Every minute counts.
“If not us, who?”
With gratitude,
The Global Response Medicine Team