Irina goes from room to room with a series of papers in her hand. It is her medical history, she indicates as she walks. After having gone through the family doctor, she now looks for the urologist. “I have a kidney stone, I have let myself be taken advantage of,” she says while she waits for a young woman in a blue sweatshirt over which she is wearing a bulletproof vest to take new information from her. “These people are a great help to us… Many can’t go to the city,” she says before continuing to search for her.
Next to her, a dozen people, most of them women and all older, are queuing in the narrow corridor of a building set up by the Frida organization, made up of volunteer doctors. “Many of the people here can barely walk. They have a hard time crossing the street, imagine going to the city,” says Irina.
Priozerné is a small town in the province of Kherson marked by war since the beginning of the invasion. In the first days they were invaded by Russian forces, “The soldiers lived in those same rooms,” Tania points out. “Me and almost everyone avoided leaving the house.” Like most, take the opportunity to have a general check-up and visit each of the specialists. She says with irony that everyone wants to see the ophthalmologist, for some reason the war has affected their eyesight.
They don’t have pharmacies, much less doctors. Many have left health problems that have plagued them for a long time unattended. “The young women leave, so there are only women over 50 years old. We often find cervical cancer because they have not been to the doctor for a long time,” explains Denis, a gynecologist from Kyiv who is part of this group of doctors who give away their weekends to provide assistance to populations in the heart. from the war.
It recognizes that patients often have advanced diseases that cannot be treated with a simple visit. “We take them to Kyiv, we operate on them many times. We pay for everything, including recovery,” she says. His team provides care in a van set up as a mobile gynecological hospital. They have a larger one, in which they can perform small surgeries, but they did not bring it so as not to attract the attention of one of the Russian surveillance drones. The situation in this part of the country is delicate, although the morning is calm, no noise can be heard, but they say it is rare. “It even worries me. I always prefer them to shoot,” says Tania.
Since the Russians were expelled to the other side of the Dnieper River as a result of pressure from the Ukrainian army in November 2022, Priozerné, like all towns on the east bank, has been attacked non-stop. Going outside has great risks. Irina says that she is terrified of waiting for the bus. The road to Kherson is Russian roulette. To top it all off, Kherson, the capital, is no different. “It is easy for no one to go to the doctor. It is not our priority. Only the bravest go there and they do it because they are going to work,” says Irina, who has learned to live with pain. As many.
Valentina, 80, says that years ago she had throat cancer and that doctors believe it has returned. She waits in front of Dr. Olana’s office, who this morning shares a room with Olexánder, both specialists in osteopathy. Olana, who is 28 years old, works in Kyiv and has been on these missions for more than twelve months. “It’s my way of supporting, it’s what I know how to do,” she says. She recognizes that in every town she visits in different parts of Ukraine at the heart of the war the situation is the same. “They all have deteriorated health, they are unbalanced due to many factors,” explains this young woman. They need everything. But above all they need people to listen to them, to embrace them, to understand them. And obviously they need doctors, but it’s even more important for them to know that they are not alone.”
In another room, Katerina has set up a desk to see her patients. She calmly checks the ears and eyes of a woman who says she is 72 years old. “They suffer a lot from their ears, the explosions have affected them. Many have suffered great losses,” says this young woman from Kherson who was displaced by the war to the city of Zaporizhzhia. “People are as grateful to us as possible, they just cry for the fact that we came,” she confesses.
Around half past one, the facilities begin to clear out. Everyone knows that attacks intensify in the afternoon. Another group is called for the next day before leaving again for the cities. Irina has already put on her coat, her hat and is smoking a cigarette outside the building. “One can see the flower or the withered leaf. I always see the flower and I am sure that we will get out of this city,” says Irina, who confesses that she spoke Russian throughout her life. Like almost everyone here, she now speaks Ukrainian.
He thinks about it a little and then starts talking about the war. He says that he doesn’t like that many people have become accustomed to living off the help of volunteers. “When the Russians were here we had very little and we all shared what we had. We helped each other. After the liberation, no one does anything anymore because they believe that the volunteers should give it to them,” says this woman who recognizes that there was a party in the town the day the Russians left. “We hug the trees, we hug each other. We sang, we danced… But then the bombings came,” she says. Since then they have been locked up again and live in fear. No longer in that of being captured, missing or abused, but in that of being hit by artillery or missiles. Or to die from invisible diseases, only detected thanks to the visits of volunteer doctors who risk their lives to reach them.
