Nicolas Tonev (special envoy to Ukraine), edited by Yanis Darras
A few days before the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the situation is tense on the country’s eastern front. In Kramatorsk, not far from the conflict zone, a hospital nevertheless managed to keep its doors open. Water, medicines… The establishment has managed to become self-sufficient, and continues to care for war wounded.
The front is only about forty kilometers away. Yet in Kramatorsk, the regional capital of Donetsk in Ukraine, a municipal hospital has managed to keep 500 beds and a surgery department open. An essential feat for residents and soldiers, despite the Russian strikes which undermined the infrastructure.
Autonomy
In the corridors of the hospital, the director Anna, shows the extent of the damage: “Here, everything has been blown up and the sandbags protect us here, even if we know that in the event of strikes, it will not save anyone .” A little further in the establishment, she points to large bottles. “It’s our drinking water supply. We can’t do without it and we have our own boiler room now, to do without the city’s power plant”.
Being autonomous is the hospital’s objective, so that the surgery sector is always ready to face the harshness of the battles.
“We absolutely need an MRI machine”
“Now, in one day, we can have a lot of patients. So those who have been operated on and stabilized, we send them immediately further to free up the beds and welcome the next patients. We absolutely need a MRI machine. There are none in the Donetsk region. The private practices that had them left with them at the start of the war”, regrets the director of the establishment.
The only consolation: the drugs themselves are not lacking. And it’s not by miracle, but by the relentlessness of Anna, and her employees.