Russia Is Waging War on Ukraine’s Hospitals

In early October 2022, Rachel Clarke hurried into Kyiv’s bomb shelters with hundreds of Ukrainians. The UK-based National Health Service (NHS) doctor and author was visiting Ukraine to provide support and training to doctors caring for the dying at hospices around the country. However, the visit to the capital came just as Russia was bombarding the city’s power infrastructure with missiles.

“You didn’t just hear the missiles landing, you felt that they reverberated in your chest,” Clarke explained at WIRED Health in London this March. Above ground, windows were blown out. Shattered glass lined the streets. “I was terrified,” Clarke says. “The Ukrainian people have endured this for months.”

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion started in February 2022, the whole of life in Ukraine has been impacted, including its health care system. Hospitals have been destroyed and damaged, medical facilities have been looted, and landmines have been found inside functioning Ukrainian hospitals that Russian forces had briefly occupied, according to the charity Médecins Sans…