With two mobile clinics we support the Ukrainian healthcare system under severe pressure after almost a year of conflict
To support responding to the growing needs and filling the increasing gaps in the medical system, INTERSOS has, in recent months, strengthened its health intervention in different areas of the country. Our mobile clinics, consisting of one doctor and two nurses, provide medical care and access to medicines in several rural locations in the oblasts (regions) of Poltava, Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv. In this location, the number and the functionality of existing health facilities are limited and, therefore, unable to ensure universal access to healthcare.
“Our intervention aims to respond to the most urgent needs and not to create additional needs with our presence,” emphasises Irad Belmont, INTERSOS medical coordinator in Ukraine. “Therefore, our objective is to fill the gap between the needs we identify and the services already available, supporting the national and local health system and collaborating with the other NGOs, without creating duplication, and focusing on a specific sector, which is primary health care”.
Among the patients, the elderly prevails, along with women and children, and people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Two mobile clinics are working in seven locations in the Odesa region, one regularly serves a centre for displaced people in the Mykolaiv region, where some 400 people find shelter, and another mobile team is active in two locations in the Poltava region and Kharkiv. The intervention facilities are mainly those used as shelters for IDPs such as schools, kindergartens, and other public buildings. Direct medical activities are complemented by prevention and awareness-raising campaigns on diseases such as Covid-19 or HIV, while support for existing health facilities continues, with the provision of medical equipment, such as the delivery of ultrasounds, scanners, X rays machines, which are in short supply in several areas of the territory, and medicines.
To increase access to healthcare, humanitarian aid also uses cash assistance targeted at people who cannot independently afford the cost of basic or specialist medical care or the cost of transport to health facilities that are often located in remote and difficult-to-reach areas.
Distribution of basic needs
In the areas where we operate, the population is facing not only conflict but also a shortage of essential goods and services. Among the main activities carried out over the past few months, the distribution of first aid kits has been essential to distribute necessities to the displaced people in the affected Oblasts: in the Poltava area, during the month of January 2023, clothes and blankets for the winter were delivered to around 450 people, more than 10,000 displaced people received food distribution to cope with the harsh winter temperatures and the lack of electricity that hampers their ability to cook. About 700 families were reached to deliver parcels of essential medicines to them.
To aggravate the already dramatic situation, there is also the shortage of electricity, a consequence of targeted bombardments of power grids that have taken place throughout the ongoing conflict. The power shortage has an enormous impact on the performance of hospitals, which often need to find electricity generators to be able to guarantee the continuation of vital care such as intensive care, surgery or specific care in maternity.