he s joining us from poland where he s visiting with organizations who are caring for ukrainian refugees 2.8 million of them in neighboring countries since the start of the russian invasion. dr. renlenner is with disaster preparedness at columbia university. good to see you as always, thank you for being with us and for being where you are now. this is what you do. you ve taken your expertise there you in. what are you learning? this is an incredibly challenging situation, ali. obviously, the first reality is this horrendous, violent war that destroyed many cities in ukraine especially in the eastern and southern part. so we have a mass migration, a very rapid migration of people out of harm s way, and they go to one of two places.
[ tires squeal, crash ] when owning a small business gets real, progressive gets you right back to living the dream. now, where were we? [ cheering ] as we mentioned a moment ago more than 5 million people have fled ukraine since the start of the russian invasion, the majority being women and children. according to unicef two-thirds of ukraine s 7.5 million children have been forced to leave their homes while nearly half of those who remain in their homes may not have enough food. i want to bring in a friend of the show, dr. irwin renlenner he s been on the screen for the last two years informing us about the covid-19 pandemic and i originally met dr. redlenner with the syrian refugee children in 2015.