Patrick Le Tréhondat
On 8 November, Be like Nina held a press conference on the reduction of medical facilities in Ukraine during martial law. According to the activists, this is happening despite the significant threats posed by the Russian invasion and the acute need for medical care for civilians and military personnel, as well as in direct violation of current legislation, which strictly prohibits the closure of medical facilities in frontline areas.
For example, Iryna Boronilo of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Pneumo-Phtisiology Centre noted that her facility had been merged into a hospital specialising in infectious diseases, in violation of Cabinet of Ministers Resolution 174 of 2023, which prohibits such reorganisation during martial law in occupied Crimea, as well as in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.
According to her, there is also manipulation of the statistics on the incidence of tuberculosis in the region, which is in fact alarming. She also pointed out that the tuberculosis centre had an operating theatre and qualified surgeons.
"Facilities with operating theatres are worth their weight in gold in a frontline city", said Iryna, recalling that the city is currently mourning the deaths of 10 people.
The oncology centre was damaged in the attack. Its patients, as well as the injured, were redirected to the regional hospital. However, according to Iryna, all the medical facilities are under threat and, consequently, all the others must be ready to receive and operate on the injured. As previously mentioned, a maternity clinic has also been closed in Zaporizhzhia, which also contravenes Resolution 174.
Olha Ivanchyna, from the Lviv regional hospital, said that her facility was a separate structure that provided treatment and rehabilitation for minors, people with complications from pneumonia.
Although the facility was supposed to operate during the coronavirus, staff were shut down for 10 months.
"On 21 December 2020, we went on a hunger strike that caused quite a stir," says Olha.
"We were supported by the miners' unions and participant organisations on the Donbass front, so the order was cancelled. The institution was then merged with the Lviv regional clinical hospital and, according to Olha, since the start of the full-scale invasion, it has been providing rehabilitation assistance to wounded soldiers. However, there is currently a dispute between the regional authorities and the Sheptytskyi district centre over who is responsible for maintaining the facility. And if the district centre is called into question, the quality of medical care will decline".
Tetyana Suprunova, an obstetrician-gynaecologist, member of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and lecturer at Vinnytsia Medical University, who was sacked for her civic activism, said that of the five maternity hospitals in Vinnytsia, only three remained.
In her view, the case of maternity unit no. 2, which enjoyed an excellent reputation and delivered 1,600 babies a year, is particularly illustrative. However, it is located in the centre of the city, which is probably the reason for its closure and the subsequent attempts to build on its land.
According to Tetiana, in order to reduce the number of births and to have a legitimate reason for closing the maternity hospital, ambulances were banned from taking women there. So on 25 February 2022, the second day of the total invasion, the town council amended the institution's charter to liquidate it. However, the town's residents opposed this arbitrary action and created a number of petitions, organised public hearings and used other democratic mechanisms. More than 300 members of staff were nevertheless made redundant, and some highly qualified doctors are now working as nurses in private clinics. However, the community succeeded in preventing the destruction of the building by appealing to the anti-corruption authorities. Legal action is currently underway to reopen the maternity unit.
For her part, Oksana Slobodiana, President of Be like Nina, pointed out that in the Lviv oblast, the local authorities have chosen the same path to close medical establishments, but that they are doing so “more delicately and slowly”, gradually reducing services and staff.