POKROVSK, Ukraine (AP) — Little Veronika’s screams echo in the halls of the perinatal hospital in Pokrovsk, eastern Ukraine.
Born just two months old and weighing 1. 5 kilograms (3 pounds, four ounces), the baby receives oxygen through a nasal tube to help him breathe while ultraviolet lamps inside an incubator treat his jaundice.
Dr. Tetiana Myroshnychenko connects the tubes that allow Veronika to feed on her mother’s stored breast milk and calm her hunger.
Before Russia invaded Ukraine last February, 3 hospitals in government-controlled spaces in the war-torn Donetsk region had facilities to treat premature babies. One was hit by a Russian airstrike and the other had to close as a result of the fighting, only the mining maternity ward of the city of Pokrovsk is still in operation.
Myroshnychenko, the remaining neonatologist at the site, now lives in the hospital. Her 3-year-old son stores the week between his stay at the facility and with his father, a coal miner, at home.
The doctor explains why now is to go: even when the sirens of the airstrikes sound, the young children in the hatchery room above the hospital floor cannot be disconnected from their rescue machines.
“If I take Veronika to the shelter, it would take five minutes. But for her, those five minutes can be critical,” Myroshnychenko says.
Hospital officials say the proportion of preterm or confusing births has roughly doubled this year compared to previous periods, blaming stress and deteriorating life criteria for wreaking havoc on pregnant women still providing in the region.
Separatists backed by Russia and Moscow now occupy just over a part of the Donetsk region, which stretches as far as Sicily or Massachusetts. Pokrovsk still sits in a Ukrainian government-controlled domain 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the front lines.
Inside the maternity wards of the hospital, war is discouraged.
“Everything that happens outdoors, this construction is afraid of us, of course, but we don’t communicate it,” Myroshnychenko said. “His biggest fear right now is the baby. “
Although fighting in Dontesk’s domain began in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists began fighting the government and seizing parts of the region, new moms are now only kept in hospital for longer periods of time because they have few opportunities to get care. once they have been downloaded.
Among them is Inna Kyslychenko, 23, from Pokrovsk. Berça, her 2-day-old daughter, Yesenia, was making plans to sign up for the mass evacuation of the region westward to safer spaces in Ukraine when she leaves the hospital. Many essential facilities in the government-controlled spaces of the Donetsk region (heating, electricity, water source) have been broken through Russian bombing, leaving life situations that are only expected to worsen as winter approaches.
“I care about small lives, only ours, but all children, all over Ukraine,” Kyslychenko said.
More than 12 million people in Ukraine have fled their homes because of the war, according to U. N. aid agencies. About part of it has moved within Ukraine and the rest have moved to other European countries.
However, taking the maternity out of Pokrovsk is an option.
“If the hospital moved, patients would still have to stay here,” said medical leader Dr. Ivan Tsyganok, who continued to paint even as the city was pierced by Russian rocket fire.
“Childbirth is anything that can be stopped or rescheduled,” ed.
The nearest existing maternity hospital is located in Ukraine’s neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region, a 3 1/2-hour drive down secondary roads, an all-too-risky adventure for women with late pregnancies.
Last week, Andrii Dobrelia, 24, and his wife Maryna, 27, arrived at the hospital from a nearby village. They looked anxious, spoke little while doctors performed a series of tests, and then took Maryna to the operating room for a C-section. . Tsyganok and his colleagues temporarily changed their clothes and prepared for the procedure.
Twenty minutes later, the screams of a newborn child, Timur, can be heard. After an examination, Timur meets his father in a nearby room.
Almost afraid to breathe, Andrii Dobrelia tenderly kissed Timur’s head and whispered something to him. As he calmed down in his father’s chest, tears welled into Andrii’s eyes.
As the war hits the six-month mark, Tsyganok and his colleagues say they have a more positive explanation for why to stay.
“These young people we are bringing into the world will be ukraine’s long-term,” Tsyganok said. “I think their lives will be different from ours. They will live outside the guerra. ___ follow the AP’s policy of war in Ukraine. in https://apnews. com/hub/russia-ukraine