(NPR) – Khmil says not only have doctors and patients been displaced because of the fighting, the conflict has also put the fundamental building blocks to make life at risk.

“Many of [the doctors] evacuated with sperm, eggs and equipment,” Khmil, 68, tells NPR. “So we helped them … to save it and not to lose everything.”

He brought some of those cryogenically frozen specimens to his two clinics in western Ukraine — one in the city of Ternopil and one in Lviv — so patients could continue their child-conceiving treatments, such as in vitro fertilization. (Read More)