Zoé Pallier, edited by Nathanaël Bentura
modified to
2:21 p.m., March 17, 2022
Doctor Mego Terzian, president of Médecins sans Frontières France (MSF), spent several days in Ukraine. Back in France, he gave his first impressions of the management of the conflict by the hospitals on the spot, while the Russian army attacks the big cities, like kyiv and Odessa.
According to the latest UN figures, published on Tuesday, at least 636 Ukrainian civilians have died and more than 1,125 are injured. On site, the non-governmental organization (NGO) Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) is working to help the Ukrainians. Mego Terzian, the president of MSF France, spent a few days there. “Wherever I went, I visited at least a dozen Ukrainian health structures. All are preparing to receive the wounded, even in a pediatric hospital,” he said.
To support MSF’s emergency fund which operates in Ukraine, in neighboring countries that host refugees and throughout the rest of the world: www.msf.fr
Odessa is preparing for an imminent assault
The Russian army attacks the big cities, like kyiv, the capital, and Odessa, at the edge of the Black Sea, a port city where a million inhabitants live. Doctors Without Borders also fears a real humanitarian catastrophe. Mego Terzian was in Odessa. The city prepares for an imminent assault.
To deal with it, the caregivers on site are ready: “The director of the hospital has thought of everything”, assured Mego Terzian. “She asked for, for example, anti-epileptic drugs. She was right to think about that. She was thinking about insulin, she was thinking about everything, even logistics, in case the hospital was cut off from the world.”
If this happens, the hospital must be, in fact, self-sufficient: “She was talking about empowering the collection of blood in their own hospital so as not to rely on the National Central Bank, which delivers blood bags. C It was a logical war situation. It is preparing for a possible new Mariupol, in Odessa itself.”