“There’s enough for five days, you take all the pills”, launches Natalya Kovalenko, handing a box of medicines to an elderly woman, who listens attentively to her instructions. Alongside her colleague Valentina, this city doctor is the only one to have remained in Lyman, this town in eastern Ukraine reconquered by kyiv at the beginning of October. They receive up to 40 patients a day.
“We give them medicine for free: pharmacies have reopened, but people have no money”, explains the practitioner in the LCI report to be found at the top of the article. These treatments are therefore delivered by NGOs, in an attempt to relieve the population. Some come to consult the duo of doctors for minor illnesses, such as a father whose children are affected by chicken pox. But some pathologies are much more serious: “cholerascabies, tuberculosis…”list Natalya Kovalenko. “People live in basements”she laments.