Preethi Pirlamarla, MD, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Queens in New York City, is back home after volunteering to provide care to refugees near the Ukraine-Poland border, ABC affiliate WABC reported March 22.
Dr. Pirlamarla volunteered through an organization called SSF-Rescuers Without Borders, based in France.
"It's something I'm never going to forget," Dr. Pirlamarla told the news outlet. "The people were walking for miles in very frigid temperatures. And a lot of the people were very cold, some very chronic conditions, some people just had to leave their medication and come with whatever they had on hand."
Dr. Pirlamarla is board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, nuclear cardiology, and advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation. She is an assistant professor at the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She earned her medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia.