ONLY ON AP Ukraine's doctors struggle with virus скачать в хорошем качестве

ONLY ON AP Ukraine's doctors struggle with virus

(18 May 2020) Ukraine's doctors are battling the coronavirus in deplorable conditions, working with substandard equipment that breaks down often and lacking drugs to treat patients. A corruption-plagued economy, weakened by a war with Russia-backed separatists the east, brought on the meltdown of the country's health care system. And almost from the start of the outbreak, the system was overwhelmed by the pandemic. Dr. Olha Kobevko is the only infectious diseases specialist at the main regional hospital in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine. The ward where she works is supposed to accommodate 60 patients, but it now treats about 100. It's housed in a hospital wing built over a century ago, when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It lacks a centralised oxygen supply system - standard in any modern clinic. The system is located in just one room, and nurses have to manually refill bags they call "oxygen pillows" every few minutes and carry them to patients elsewhere. The sound of coughs, muffled by oxygen masks, mixes with the squeaking of medical equipment as nurses rush through dimly lit corridors to change the oxygen bags. The air smells of ozone from ultraviolet lamps used to disinfect the wards. At one point, a breathing machine breaks down, leaving a coronavirus patient gasping helplessly for air. Kobevko rushes from room to room to see if there is an electrician among any of her other patients who can fix it. Eventually, the 37-year-old figures out a way to get the device working again on her own. The critically ill have been moved to a separate hospital building that has a few ventilators. But it also is filled beyond capacity and cannot always accept extra patients, even those in serious condition. Kobevko says that her basic monthly salary of $175 - on a par with the nation's current minimum wage - reflects the general low regard of medical professionals in Ukraine. She gets an extra $25 in monthly hardship pay for working in the infectious disease clinic. The year-old government inherited an underfunded health care system that was further crippled by a reform launched by their predecessors that cut state subsidies drastically. The subsidies previously covered wages for health care workers and hospital utility bills. But under a new stage of reforms that began last month, those funds have been sharply reduced, hitting workers hard and putting many clinics on the verge of closure. The president has sharply criticised the reforms, warning they could mean closing more than 300 hospitals and leaving 50,000 medical workers jobless. And his government has offered a subsidy to those medics dealing with the outbreak that quadruples their monthly wage. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...