Alla Troubatcheva, who has been practicing as a doctor for forty years in eastern Ukraine, has persisted in staying in the industrial city of Siversk devastated by the bombings, the patients continuing to flock to her small practice.
The hospital where she worked, in this city of 10,000 inhabitants, was bombed and reduced to rubble by Russian forces.
One of his colleagues, killed by artillery fire, is buried outside. Hospital staff and patients have long since fled the scene.
When the missiles destroyed the trees and houses near her home, she was about to leave.
But “people say they need me,” she told AFP. “I’m the only one who stayed, the family doctor, a woman of all trades,” she continues.
The exodus of hospital patients, the bombing of the hospital, and a new military-run triage system for wounded soldiers disrupted medical practice.
Patients flock day and night to the doctor’s office, Monday being the busiest day.
“Headaches, sore throats, high blood pressure, stress, insomnia, you have it all,” she told AFP.
Last year, one of 200 patients, whose follow-up she notes in a school notebook, ended up with a blocked trachea.
“I don’t want to congratulate myself too much, but if I hadn’t been there, he would have died,” she admits.
“We always need medicine, especially in times of war.”
The muffled sounds of shelling in the distance resonate in concert with the songs of birds in his garden. A piece of missile, covered with spring flowers, stands stuck in the ground under a fruit tree.
According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 106 medical staff were killed and more than 540 healthcare facilities destroyed or damaged by Russian forces.
Mrs. Troubatcheva’s colleague, the only one who stayed with her in Siversk, is on this list. The hospital where she worked was destroyed.
Several graves were recently dug under the collapsed roof of the abandoned facility, which had a capacity of 250 patients.
Broken glass and bricks litter the hospital floor and dust accumulates in the operating rooms.
Now 25 elderly Ukrainians displaced by advancing Russian troops are living in basements to protect themselves from strikes.
President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered civilians in the area to leave last July, but the hospital held out for another six months.
“All the bedridden patients who had trauma or who could not walk were evacuated,” said Elena, a 51-year-old nurse who remained at the hospital where she distributes medicine to those who present themselves there.
“There are bombings every day. The buildings were destroyed a long time ago,” she said.
Alla Troubatcheva was able to save laboratory equipment from the bombed hospital and has enough stock in her small cabinet, in addition to humanitarian aid.
At the same time, circulating on the roads rutted by the passage of combat tanks in the Donetsk region, ambulances come to the aid of wounded soldiers in the trenches.
Because, alongside the civilian hospital system, the army has its own medical facilities, explains the doctor, who says she is however ready to receive a soldier and give him painkiller in case of headaches.
What advice does she give to those who are overwhelmed by stress? “Leave! If people say they can’t sleep or they feel bad, I tell them to leave,” she said, lamenting that many ignore this advice.
“People are attached to where they live. It’s scary but no one leaves,” she says.
21/04/2023 20:06:56 – Siversk (Ukraine) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
