Where leaving is not an option: The Ukrainian medics living inside a hospital on the frontline to save premature babies
Echoing down the corridors of eastern Ukraine’s Pokrovsk Perinatal Hospital are the loud cries of tiny Veronika.
Born nearly two months prematurely weighing 3lb 4oz, she receives oxygen through a nasal tube to help her breathe while ultraviolet lamps inside an incubator treat her jaundice.
Tetiana Myroshnychenko carefully connects the tubes that allow Veronika to feed on her mother’s stored breast milk and ease her hunger.
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, three hospitals in government-controlled areas of the already war-torn Donetsk region had facilities to care for premature babies.
One was hit by a Russian air strike and the other had to close as a result of the fighting – leaving only the maternity hospital in the coal mining town of Pokrovsk still operating.
Dr Myroshnychenko, the site’s only remaining neonatologist, now lives at the hospital.
Her three-year-old son
divides the week between staying at the facility and with his father, a coal miner, at home.
The doctor said it is now impossible to leave. Even when the air raid sirens sound, the babies in the hospital’s above-ground incubation ward cannot be disconnected from their life-saving machines.
“If I carry Veronika to the shelter, that would take five minutes. But for her, those five minutes could be critical,” Dr Myroshnychenko said.
Hospital officials say the proportion of births occurring prematurely or with complications has roughly doubled this year compared to previous times, blaming stress and rapidly worsening living standards for taking a toll on the pregnant women still left in the area.
Russia and Moscow-backed separatists now occupy just over half the Donetsk region, which is similar in size to Sicily. Pokrovsk is still in a Ukrainian government-controlled area 40 miles west of the front lines.
Many essential services in government-held areas of Donetsk – heat, electricity and water supplies – have been damaged by Russian bombardment, leaving living conditions that are only expected to worsen as winter approaches.