Short communication, Note
Healthcare crisis in Ukraine – worrying consequences of the Russian-Ukrainian war
Vitalii Poberezhets
; Department of Propedeutics of Internal Medicine, National Pirogov Memorial Medical University, Vinnytsya, Ukraine
Abstract
The large-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine
starting on February 24, 2022 has caused the biggest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II. Previous
stages of the Russian-Ukrainian war, including the annexation of Crimea and war in Donbas, have already affected
over 5 million people. Since 2014, in these conflicts 10 000
persons were killed (1), more than 24 000 were injured, and
1.6 million were forced to flee their homes. An extremely high percentage of these displaced people suffer from
conflict-related traumatic events (65%), with significantly
higher rates among those with Ukrainian ethnic identity
(2). However, the total burden of the Russian hybrid war
in Ukraine that lasted for almost eight years seems insignificant compared with the number of the people affected during only a few months of the large-scale military
aggression in 2022. From February to August 2022, more
than 12.65 million people were directly affected by the
war; 16.9 million Ukrainians were displaced – 10.3 million
refugees have fled the county and 6.6 million have been
displaced internally. Hundreds of thousands of people are
still trapped and faced with a shortage of food, water, and
medicines (3). On August 1, 2022, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights reported about 12 584 civilian casualties, including 5327 killed (4975 adults and 352
children). The real data could be much grimmer because of
the delay in reporting from locations such as Mariupol (Donetsk region), Izium (Kharkiv region), and Lysychansk and
Sievierodonetsk (Luhansk region), where intense hostilities
are taking place (4)
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
306595
URI
Publication date:
25.8.2022.
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