Supporting people with chronic illness
Serhiy and Kateryna, a married couple from Sloviansk, in Donetsk oblast, were evacuated to a hospital in Lutsk, northwestern Ukraine. Kateryna has liver cirrhosis and cannot get help where she lives; all the specialist doctors have left the city because of the war.
“Almost all pharmacies in the city are also closed,” said Serhiy. “And those still working have a limited amount of medicine.”
Caring for wounded children
Fourteen-year-old Vladislav was playing video games in Lyman, Donetsk oblast, when a mortar shell hit his home. Wounded by shrapnel, he was evacuated to Lviv, with his mother Julia, for further treatment.
“While Vladislav was being taken to hospital, he was conscious, and cursing from pain,” said Julia. “He was complaining of pain in his abdomen and that he couldn’t move his legs. He said he was scared he wouldn’t survive.”
Denys Babiy, a nurse on the MSF medical train, remembers the story of a twelve-year-old boy from Kharkiv who was playing in a playground when the shelling began. He endured injuries to his abdomen and chest, in addition to broken bones.
“The boy had many surgeries,” said Babiy. “Despite what he had experienced, there was so much joy in his eyes that he energized the entire train team. He laughed and told stories about how he did sports before the war. He was glad that his limbs were not torn off by the shrapnel. His mother talked to me all night. I saw that she wanted to talk, to share her pain. She talked for two hours, and I just listened.”