The difficult days of a doctor in a bombed Ukrainian city

In a health center in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, located on the front line of fire, Dr. Elena Molchanova leads patients to a small office heated by a wood stove, where she delivers medicines or fills out death certificates.

Sometimes, its visitors, the last residents of the city bombed daily and without essential services, only seek refuge from the cold.

At 40, she is one of five medical professionals who can provide care to the 8,000 people authorities say still remain in the city.

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In recent months, bakhmut it is the epicenter of bitter fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region, which Moscow wants to control completely.

Before the war, when the city was bustling with its population of about 70,000, the corridors of the clinic where Molchanova works were lit, the toilets were working and the reception desk was manned.

Now, he is confined to an office, with disorderly piles of medical supplies and papers piled high.

The doctor worries that the large window behind her desk will break if one of the shells crashing into the city lands too close. But she doesn’t plan to leave.

“When I enrolled in medical school, I took the Hippocratic oath and I cannot abandon these people”he explains to AFP. “They come here for medical care and we provide it to the best of our ability”stands out.

Elderly or people with disabilities

Many of those still living amid the fighting in Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar – described by a senior Ukrainian official as the “bloody” since Russia invaded the country in February 2022- are elderly or have disabilities.

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Molchanova stresses that the availability of medicines and equipment, especially for psychiatric problems or chronic diseases such as diabetes, is sporadic, and that in the best of cases.

The supplies depend on what arrives from the Ministry of Health, from non-profit organizations or even what is recovered from the bombed buildings, such as the two wheelchairs that the soldiers brought in on Wednesday afternoon.

“The first to arrive is the first to be served.”, explains Molchanova. “There are not enough syringes or insulin needles. Heart medication ran out very quickly. There is enough paracetamol but that will not cure the patients”the Mint.

Although Molchanova cannot always provide medical care, she, her husband and two other doctors also provide relief to Bakhmut residents by housing them in basements next to the health center where they live.

In the low-ceilinged, lamp-lit rooms, there are stacks of thick logs to fuel the stoves.

Thanks to a generator, residents can charge their cell phones and access the internet while they escape the cold.

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The freezing weather means that Molchanova no longer worries about refrigerating the insulin, but as a consequence of the low temperatures, patients with colds or burns from stoves multiply.

But the days also include the filling out of death certificates. Oleksiy Stepanov came to see the doctor to ask for the corresponding one for his 83-year-old neighbor, who died in his house, where the windows had been blown out.

Tetiana, who asked not to give her last name, came to pick up medicine for her neighbor, an 81-year-old man who is deaf, blind and bedridden. “He has no idea that there is a war or that we are being bombed,” comment.

Before, his family paid him to take care of him, but now he stays of his own free will. “I am afraid to take this old man with me. He is not in a condition to travel so here I stay ”summarizes.

Source: AFP