Three years ago the war in Ukraine began. Since then, AMU has been supporting the population with various interventions to support medical care, to ensure health in the regions of Kharkiv and Vinnytsia, where many internally displaced persons have found refuge.
The emergency is health
Health care is one of the emergencies in Ukraine, three years after the beginning of the Russian invasion. Many people, especially the elderly, do not have the possibility of treatment and who – often displaced from the areas most affected by the war – live in conditions of extreme vulnerability: it is not always easy to take care of yourself and your health if you do not have the strength and means to do so.
In Halyna’s small apartment
When the team of the medical assistance project – supported by AMU – entered Halyna’s small apartment in Kharkiv (eastern Ukraine), they immediately realized the delicacy of the situation.
Halyna is 81 years old, and she needed some medical supplies that she could not afford on her own . Her husband and sister, both older than her, also live in her house.
All three were displaced, all three fled their lands, to find a safer refuge where the bombings would not reach. Husband and wife came from Vovchansk, while Halyna’s sister came from the Kherson region.
The mourning of war
Nadya, Halyna’s sister, did not leave her home far away. She also had to endure a great loss: the death of her daughter , killed while she was in a supermarket that was under Russian bombing.
Precarious health conditions
In Kharkiv, the three elderly people were trying to rebuild some normality, sharing a small one-room apartment.. But the trauma of war has left a deep mark on their lives. All three have health problems.
Halyna suffered a stroke that left her legs paralyzed. Now she can no longer walk. Her husband, Mykola, developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which led to partial loss of vision. Nadiya, on the other hand, suffered a heart attack after the loss of her daughter, and is now in very fragile health.
The doctor’s visit
When the doctor examined them, it was clear that the entire family was in urgent need of assistance, and he prescribed and distributed medicines to all three of them. But the medical team of Caritas-Spes Kharkiv, which receives support from AMU through the Emergency Ukraine project, did much more for these people: they gave them back a sense of hope and dignity in the midst of a very difficult situation .
The two women and the man who live in this small apartment in Kharkiv felt less alone, no longer abandoned to themselves. And this aroused deep emotion in them: it was a salvation in a moment of desperation.
