In June, two charitable medical outreaches took place in the war-affected eastern part of Ukraine, namely, in the villages of Nizhnie and Vrubivka, Luhansk region.
A team of CBN-Emmanuel’s physicians and Christian ministers came to Lugansk region to provide free medical services to the locals. A total of 683 patients were registered on the two outreaches!

Doctors had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of people and hear many stories about living in villages affected by war. Most people suffer from high blood pressure and heart problems. This is not surprising: even at the time when the medical outreach took place in the villages, there was shelling at night time. Despite of the difficult circumstances, people were very open and warmly welcomed the doctors and the whole team.

Thanks to the “Pope for Ukraine” Initiative, some “grave” patients were referred to Kyiv, where they had life-saving surgeries. Irina Ch. and Lilia L. from the village of Nizhnye came to the medical outreach on Saturday and on Monday they came to Kyiv to have surgeries done.

Iryna Ch. had lived in Donetsk for more than 30 years. Now her house is completely ruined. “A neighbor sent me a photo of my house, or better to say, of its ruins. Now I have no housing”, – Irina shares. In 2014, she and her husband with two children had to leave their cozy house and move to Nizhny village, 6 kilometers away from Bakhmutka. “From the “big war” we came to a “smaller war”, Irina says.

Iryna came to the doctors with a hernia. It turned out that the woman had been suffering from this health problem for the last 17 years! Over the years, the problem only aggravated. “After my son’s high school graduation, I literally crawled out of his school. The pain was just terrible; I was sweating. The hernia removal surgery cost 7,000 UAH and I didn’t have this money” the woman shared. When CBN-Emmanuel’s doctors offered her a free surgery, she couldn’t decide what to do. “How will I leave my children?” – were her first thoughts. However, the fear that if her health problem gets even worse and she might die, helped her make the decision and have the life-saving surgery in Kyiv. No words can convey her gratitude for the provided medical assistance.

“I am very grateful to all of the doctors and organizers of this project. Very soon I will become a healthy woman. I still have to teach my children and care for my grandchildren in the future“,  Irina said with a smile on her face

Lilia L.  is a single mother of three children; the youngest one was born during the war. “I remember hiding in the basement with little children when the bullets whistled and mines were blowing up. My children are now used to living at war, but at that time they were living in fear and despair”, – Lilia shared with the doctors. The woman is unemployed, her only source of income is allowance for children from the government. For the last  4 years the woman had been living with a large ovary cyst which appeared immediately as a woman had given birth to her last baby. Lilia never came to the doctors with it, until she felt severe pain.

“I heard about the upcoming medical outreach and decided to wait and come for a consultation. After an ultrasound exam, the doctors told me that the cyst was very large in size and needed to be removed urgently”, he woman says. Lilia was referred to the “Consilium Medical Center” in Kyiv where she had an urgent surgery. All of her medical expenses were covered by “Pope for Ukraine” Initiative.

“I do not know what could have happened to me had it not been for the surgery. Probably, I would just live with this pain until I died and my three children became orphans. I feel much better now, there is no pain anymore! I can’t express with words how grateful I am for the provided help!”

We are grateful to “Pope for Ukraine” Initiative, the doctors of “Medical Mobile Clinic” and everyone who participated in the medical outreaches in war-affected eastern Ukraine!