Fighting back in the dark
Surgeons work by flashlight as Ukraine power grid battered
Dr Oleh Duda, a cancer surgeon at a hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, was in the middle of a complicated, dangerous surgery when he heard explosions nearby. Moments later, the lights went out.
He had no choice but to keep working with only a headlamp for light. The lights came back when a generator kicked in three minutes later, but it felt like an eternity.
“Those fateful minutes could have cost the patient his life,” he said.
The operation on a major artery took place on Nov 15, when the city in western Ukraine suffered blackouts as Russia unleashed yet another missile barrage on Ukraine’s power grid, damaging nearly 50% of the country’s energy facilities.
The devastating strikes, which continued last week and plunged the country into darkness once again, strained and disrupted the healthcare system, already battered by years of corruption, mismanagement, the Covid-19 pandemic and nine months of war.
Scheduled operations are being postponed, patient records are unavailable because of Internet outages, and paramedics have had to use flashlights to examine patients in darkened apartments.
The World Health Organisation said last week that Ukraine’s health system is facing “its darkest days in the war so far” amid the growing energy crisis, the onset of cold winter weather and other challenges. “This winter will be life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine,” the WHO’S regional director for Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, said.
He predicted that up to three million more people could leave their homes in search of warmth and safety, and “will face unique health challenges, including respiratory infections such as Covid-19, pneumonia and influenza”.
Last week, Kyiv’s Heart Institute posted on its Facebook page a video of surgeons operating on a child’s heart with the only light coming from headlamps and a battery-powered flashlight.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov again insisted last week that Russia was targeting only sites “directly or indirectly related to military power”.
But just last week, a strike on a maternity ward in eastern Ukraine killed a newborn and heavily wounded two doctors. In the Kharkiv region, two people were killed after Russian forces shelled a clinic.