2023-12-05 10:24:29
Nove Zalisia (Ukraine), Dec 5 (EFE).- The Spanish section of Doctors of the World leads the efforts of this NGO to restore and improve access to primary medicine in the Ukrainian territories near the front or that were under Russian occupation , where the war has wreaked havoc on a medical system that was already precarious before the conflict.
One of the areas where they work is Borodianka, a predominantly rural town located regarding 60 kilometers northwest of kyiv that Russian forces used as a logistical hub in their frustrated attempt to reach the Ukrainian capital in 2022.
More than a year and a half following her liberation, Borodianka has disappeared from the news and war reports. But the horrors of the conflict continue to take their toll on the towns in the area.
Personnel deficit
“Before the war there was a doctor here, but the woman is now in Germany,” Valentina Tovstenko, one of the nurses who works at the outpatient clinic in Nove Zalisia, a town near Borodianka, tells EFE.
The clinic lost its therapist during the conflict, who died with his family during the military attacks on the area.
The Russian invasion also pushed many young and middle-aged residents of these communities to seek refuge elsewhere. His departure left his elderly relatives alone and without help to reach the local hospital, located regarding ten kilometers from Nove Zalisia.
A mobile multidisciplinary team
“Here Doctors of the World works to restore primary health care services,” the general coordinator in Spain of this international NGO, Nicolás Dotta, tells EFE during a visit to Nove Zalisia.
The NGO has formed a multidisciplinary mobile team made up of a family doctor, a nurse, a midwife and a psychologist who consults once a month in each of the more than twenty towns around Kiev included in the project.
On a cold December day in the morning, older men and women and mothers with small children move along the snowy roads towards the clinic to take advantage of the visit of medical professionals and receive care to which they do not have access the rest of the month. .
In the same entry, the psychologist, Vitali Nechepurenko, gives them advice on how to control the anxiety in which many live since the war completely disrupted their lives.
“Many people come whose relatives have left Ukraine, among them many men (who are prohibited by martial law from crossing the border if they are of military age) whose wives and children have taken refuge outside the country,” Nechepurenko tells EFE.
Anxiety and high tension
These types of situations, added to the economic pressure and anguish that the war has brought, have caused cases of hypertension and anxiety to skyrocket, the nurses who provide care at the outpatient clinic explain to EFE.
In addition to providing consultations, the medical team created by Doctors of the World with financial support from German cooperation takes people who need it and cannot travel on their own to the nearest regional hospital.
The users of these services, who are mostly older women, highlight the positive impact that the Doctors of the World project has had on their lives. “We once once more have someone who helps us with our health and solves our problems,” says one of them while she waits to be treated at the clinic.
A neglected need
“It is a project aimed above all at the control and monitoring of chronic diseases,” says Nicolás Dotta, the general coordinator of Médicos del Mundo in Spain.
The pressing demands on other types of medicine in times of war, such as the treatment of seriously injured people, have put primary care needs on the back burner, despite this being essential for millions of vulnerable people.
In addition to alleviating the negative effects caused by the war, this Doctors of the World project aims to transform the crisis into an opportunity to improve the Ukrainian medical system in the medium and long term.
The idea, explains Dotta, is to “transfer it to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine so that they are responsible for the continuity of services” and can move forward in building a public health system that places more emphasis on primary care.
Marcel Gascón
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