Being a doctor in rebel-occupied Donetsk is challenging work, especially as Kiev authorities have cut off funding for doctors. RT’s Jean Flight meets the medical staff that are treating the victims of bullets and cluster bombs.
Roman, 23, is a militiaman. He wanders restlessly up and down the hospital corridor. Sometimes he stops by a ward door. He is wearing a uniform with a hood covering his eyes and a bandage strapping his chin. He holds a silver cross in his hand. Injured by a bomb fragment, he can barely speak: the doctors screwed a metal plate into his bottom jaw, and he still has a lot of surgery to go.
Alexey, a surgeon, believes his patient is one lucky man. If the
fragment had hit him in the head, Roman would have been killed.
Instead, once the doctors fix his wounds and replace his missing
teeth with dental implants, he will be free to go and recover at
home.
Fifteen more people with similar injuries have been hospitalized
in Donetsk Municipal Hospital No.1. Over the last six months,
surgeons have operated on over a hundred militias and about as
many injured civilians.
No one checks the militants’ names or passports. To be admitted
into hospital, they only need to make their call sign known.
“The doctors have received no money for two months. Kiev has
refused to pay their wages, while Donetsk authorities have yet to
tackle this,” says Alexey.
His office is full of icons. “These are the gifts of my
patients,” he explains. In fact, there are icons on the
walls everywhere in the hospital: in the wards, corridors, and
examination rooms.
“Those who have been to war and those who haven’t are poles
apart. Even their sleep pattern is different: they can’t sleep in
silence. We wish we had psychologists to help both the injured
and the doctors, but we don’t.”
“We were never trained to treat blast injuries. We only used
to deal with miners and workers. So we had to think on our feet.
The medicines that we get are supplied by charities, because Kiev
no longer supports our hospital. Now we depend on humanitarian
aid for everything,” says Alexey.
“We’ve seen quite an array of injuries over these months,
too. First there were gunshot wounds, then blast wounds. We also
had to learn to do these types of surgeries very quickly.”
“The worst injuries are inflicted by cluster bombs,” he
says, adding that doctors have their own scale of injuries
depending on the fragmentation pattern and where the patient was
at the moment of injury. But the doctors lack both time and
qualifications to make reports and keep statistical records.
“I still keep the first bullet I removed. It’s a caliber of
5.45mm,” the surgeon says.
Igor Bugorkov, the head of the regional dental center and an oral
surgeon himself, shows me a room that suffered a direct hit on
August 7. The window frame has been since filled with bricks –
they won’t buy a new frame anyway. All they can to do is wait for
one as part of humanitarian aid.
“The shelling started at 10 am. We were lucky that the first
two mines didn’t reach the hospital, and we had the time to
evacuate the patients and the personnel. So only two people
died,” says the chief doctor.
The postmortem unit lost 25 windows. Another mine landed in the
yard of the 18th hospital and the explosion shattered every
window in the institution although it doesn’t look that way. The
21st hospital is located near the airport and is currently under
fire but continues to operate.
He showed me the basement where during the fierce fighting they
set up bunk beds for patients among the engineering systems, with
doctors on duty around the clock.
The last time staff were paid was in August.
“Since August 30, the hospital has been part of the
healthcare system of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and Kiev put
a lid on everything – salaries and medicines. We just rely on the
leftovers and humanitarian aid,” explains the surgeon.
They get help from some of the field commanders, the Red Cross,
and Doctors Without Borders. Catering is on credit. But you can’t
get medicines on credit. Yet we manage to get by,” says Dr
Bugorkov.
After the first heavy shelling, 300 personnel resigned, bringing
the staff down to 1,900. Those who remain don’t blame those who
left, but don’t consider their work to be anything extraordinary.
Initially, the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic fired
all the hospitals’ heads, but then asked them to return to their
posts. Vladimir Sovpel, the head of Hospital No. 1, 77, was
fired, too, but has now been approached to serve as an aide to
the government.
Some newly-appointed officials continue to threaten the doctors
when they bring up the pay or medicines issue. “If you stick your
neck out, we are going to fire all of you – there are hundreds of
unemployed doctors out there, so treat the wounded and don’t ask
questions,” a senior official was quoted as saying.
“There are talks underway to unblock our bank accounts. We
only have one bank up and running in our part of the Donetsk
Region, that’s Oschadbank. But we had accounts with commercial
banks. Kiev recently promised to provide salaries, medicines,
power and food, but will they deliver? That’s a big
question,” muses Igor Bugorkov.
Russia helped the medical workers once by handing out 1,000
hryvnas (or around $100).
Bugorkov says he can’t really complain. It’s much worse in the
rural areas, he adds. The region’s new leadership promised to
raise pay from 1,200–2,700 hryvnas ($110–300) to 3,000–5,000.
“Let’s wait and see,” says Bugorkov. He has icons with
Orthodox saints all over his room. Otherwise, the setting looks
modest. Above his head is the icon of the patron saint of
dentists.
We go out for a walk into the park around the hospital. The staff
are burning autumn leaves, with the nurses and patients raking
them in from the lawns.
“For the first time this year we weren’t able to remove the
leaves. We don’t have the cars, and so burn them. Otherwise,
it’ll turn into a mess next spring. It’s a voluntary
effort,” the doctor stops near a crater in the asphalt.
“That’s where the first mine landed that saved our hospital.
We heard the loud noise and ordered an evacuation. The second
clipped the crowns of the trees, and we had to cut them
down,” he says, pointing to mutilated tree trunks and
shrapnel-ridden walls in the neighboring buildings.
“I am sure they didn’t mean to hit the hospital. They didn’t
target anything, for that matter. The military equipment on both
sides is outdated. Nearby we have a military base and a dorm for
the militia,” explains the doctor.
“There’s no more abhorrent a sound than a military jet flying
really close to the ground at full speed. It’s part of the
intimidation tactics, they say. It’s like a metal on metal
sound.”
With that, the doctor says goodbye and goes back to his hospital,
looking at its shattered windows.
Jean Flight,
Donetsk