And fully operational hospital, but also an emergency system with ten emergency ambulances in the territory of the disputed regions and five teams that treat patients in the cities and towns under siege through the system of mobile clinics. In the Donbass, Doctors Without Borders is the only international organization present, a health bulwark in the hottest and most dramatic area of war-torn Ukraine: “We get where others fail – explains the coordinator of the ‘Donbass Project’, Vincent Porpiglia – and we have been present in Donbass since the beginning of the conflict. Indeed, we had already been in Ukraine since 2014, when the internal conflict broke out, then after the invasion of February 24, 2022 everything changed, bringing the Emergency Pool into action. To carry on our work there is a team of 135 people who works between Dnipro and some centers of Donbass, engaged on various fronts, as many as our projects are activated in practice. MSF has always acted directly in war scenarios and goes straight to the point. Our security rules of engagement are different from other organizations which can often only operate remotely. Of course, should the Russians take control of Bakhmutthe first city to be threatened would be its own Kostantinivka. It is therefore not said that in the future the scenario will change for us, seeing ourselves forced to evacuate from here and secure our business further west, behind a security line.”
MSF guarantees treatment to civilians who stubbornly wanted to stay in their war-threatened homes in the inhabited centers of the Donetsk province. Through a system of mobile clinics cyclically the health personnel, made up of both nurses and doctors, move across the ground touching 24 locations. A fundamental service for a population whose average age is very high and often urgent health care needs. Diabetics and heart patients receive on-site treatment. The project was activated last October. The basis is a Slovakanother city threatened by the Russian advance and in 2014 at the center of violent fighting between pro-Russian and Ukrainian forces for control of the city, now in the hands of Kiev.
Then there is another piece of the ‘Donbass Project’: “We have activated rescue teams for emergencies in the area with local personnel on board about ten ambulances – adds Porpiglia, in Donbass since June 2022 -. Sort of 118 in war zones with Intensive Care Unit. In the first two weeks of February we helped 220 patients. As far as the rescue part is concerned, MSF was the first to cover emergencies for citizens in centers liberated from Russian occupation, including outside Donbass. I think about Izium and to all the oblast of Kharkiv, where people no longer had anything and were in dramatic conditions”. Finally the basic project. If in Kostantinivka there weren’t the hospital managed directly by Médecins Sans Frontières practically it would not be possible to treat civilians injured during the conflict. The war in Donbass has disrupted everything, including the health system in the northwestern part of the region still under Ukrainian control. From Pokrovsk to Kramatorsk to Slov’jansk there are no health centers equipped with war surgery able to heal wounds caused by explosions and gunshots. After the training provided by international surgical personnel, now practically absent in the hospital, two local surgeons ensure the surgical interventions for war wounds. Only local staff manage the hospital, including doctors, logisticians, security personnel and so on: “The conflict is becoming more radical and more and more wounded are arriving at the hospital and the situation could get worse”.