A local police department in Al Kut, which is in the Ukrainian peacekeepers’ zone of responsibility, again requested the Fifth Detached Mechanized Brigade to provide medical assistance to a massively burned local resident, who was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.
I join a team of Ukrainian military doctors as we head for the central town hospital in our “tablet” (a code name for our ambulance) escorted by a Ukrainian military police patrol. Everybody is sporting body armor and helmets, automatic rifles kept at the ready. Beside me is the brigade medical service chief, Maj. Mykhailo Yakymiv, along with surgical department chief Capt. Dmytro Horoliuk, and interpreter of Arabic 2-nd Lt. Yuliya Sumko. They never come empty-handed: aside from the medicine chest, they usually bring a few dozen sets of bandages, disposable rubber gloves, and canisters of water.
“That’s for the kids,” says Maj. Yakymiv. “Yesterday we examined them at the hospital. Local doctors say they are short of bandages, let alone medication. It is a government-funded facility. There is no money. Thus everyone suffers.”
On our way we crossed two bridges and took a turn for the road leading to the hospital. We passed makeshift stalls, where local men try their hardest to sell something. Their welfare depends on this, if you can call it that. Caught in a traffic jam, our car was immediately besieged by peddlers shoving through the open windows of our car wristwatches, Cola, Kalashnikov bayonets, sunglasses, CD players, batteries, American dollars, and other “high quality” goods. Some begged for food or water.
After a fifteen minutes’ ride we saw a high-rise building loom in the distance.
“That’s the Central Hospital,” said Maj. Yakymiv. “It used to be the Saddam Hussein Hospital. Although Saddam’s name has been obliterated from the plaque, the local folk still call it that from force of habit.”
Approaching the hospital, we were spotted by a guard who darted to open the gate, smiling and waving his hand in welcome. No sooner had we stopped than a woman in black rushed to the car.
“This is the mother of the child we examined yesterday,” said Capt. Horoliuk, “Now she’s going to beg for that ointment.”
“Is there no medication at all?” I asked.
“Well, there is,” answered Dmytro. “But for some reason she believes that our ointment is better than the one she received from a local doctor. If fact, that one will do just as well. It’s just that her child is badly burned, and the burns will take long to heal, even if treated at our best hospitals. Recovery from burns is a lengthy process. This is only natural. The body must regenerate skin cells, overcome intoxication, and the patient, bedridden for months, must endure excruciating pain. Everything depends on the degree of the burn.”
Hardly had we stepped out of the car when the woman came running to us and started chattering away. From the torrent of words and a brief translation I understood that a miraculous recovery happened overnight, and treatment must be continued.
“They say it on purpose,” Dmytro commented on this scene. “They do it to lure us here, and this has happened before. I noticed that during a few of my visits to the hospital.”
“How would you explain this?”
“They do not trust their doctors too much and tell us about corruption commonplace among medics,” the captain explained. “Also, people whose memories of the Soviet Union are still fresh still believe that the best doctors come from there. To them Ukraine is the same country.”
I saw what he meant as soon as we entered the hospital and approached the reception desk. In next to no time we were surrounded by a dozen men, each vying for our attention. Maj. Yakymiv made the first move and asked the chief policeman to help find the burned girl admitted to the hospital the day before. Unfortunately, we knew neither her first nor last name. The reception knew nothing about the patient either. After an exchange of questions and answers with the crowd made up of patients, their relatives, policemen, and onlookers we were ushered into the elevator.
In an attempt to establish order, the policeman gestured to the crowd to make way. Three more men took the elevator with us. Before we entered over a dozen men poured out of it.
On the fifth floor we walked the length of the corridor. On either side we passed wards filled to capacity. Almost all of them were packed with relatives hovering above the patients and waving handkerchiefs to keep flies away. The air was stuffed. Many eyes followed us. In them we saw lack of understanding, hope, and simple interest.
A man, who assured us that it was he who called us here, ushered us into a ward. As we entered a cramped room for two beds, we were suddenly exposed to a strong smell. The bed that we approached looked like a nomad tent. Two Arabs hurriedly removed blankest from a metal arch-shaped frame, which revealed a horrible sight: an unconscious, emaciated, and massively burned man reflexively grasped the upper frame with both hands and moaned with pain. As if shrouded in mist, his eyes were expressionless. Our interpreter felt weak. Dmytro Horoliuk together with Mykhailo Yakymiv examined the patient and shortly came up with a diagnosis: third-degree burns that affected some 25% of the body. They also noticed developing bedsores. The same diagnosis was confirmed in the patient’s medical report. However, the medication available is obviously not enough for a patient in such critical condition. Our doctors proposed additional methods of treatment: to breathe out via a tube immersed in a bottle filled with water.
“This helps prevent congestion of static pneumonia if the patient is bedridden for a long time,” explains Mykhailo Yakymiv.
Captain Dmytro Horoliuk immediately showed the relatives how this simple albeit very necessary contraption could be made using improvised means. He took off a rubber tube from the phonendoscope, immersed it in a bottle with water, and showed how to use it. Immediately they moved to insert the tube into the patient’s mouth. However, Dmytro gestured them to stop. The captain explained through the interpreter that the patient had to be moved to one side to prevent him from choking. Moreover, Mykhailo Yakymiv suggested that a special pillow be put under the patient’s back to prevent bedsores.
“This patient is in very critical condition,” explained Mykhailo. “In fact, he must be taken to a specialized burn center. But this family is too poor to treat him. Thus, they must be patient and find at least some money for special care. We will not be able to take care of him on a permanent basis. The only thing we can do is give them burn ointment, bandages, anesthetics, and so forth.”
Then a relative of the patient approached us and asked whether we could give the poor man some juice. We decided to fetch him some juice from the camp.
We went into the next ward followed by a crowd. Rumors about the miracle-working Ukrainian military doctors spread like wildfire. Finally, we found the girl we came looking for. I will not describe the horrible sight that opened before our eyes. Horror films are innocent tales compared to this. At first glance Mykhailo and Dmytro could tell that the girl, aged twenty-five, had third degree burns of the D category covering some 30% of her body. Whatever that means, it was not a sight for faint-hearted. Our interpreter struggled not to pass out. We learned that the girl, Amal Kadym, was a victim of a road accident. She could not get out when her car capsized and exploded. Moreover, she was a sister of policeman Mohammed, who accompanied us. Their mother, who called the Ukrainian doctors, just stood by silently listening to what was being said.
Maj. Yakymiv explained to the relatives that it was a very bad case (although patients with light cases are not admitted here), and doctors from the specialized burn center in Baghdad must intervene. He also promised to bring ointment, anesthetics, intravenous opiates, along with the required bandages from the Ukrainian peacekeepers’ camp. Mohammed and his mother thanked and requested that we arrange for the girl to be taken to Baghdad, since they could not afford it. We had to promise we would try to get the Polish helicopter pilots to fly her there.
When we were going down in the elevator, Dmytro Horoliuk remembered how they were received by local doctors when they first met:
“They eyed us with suspicion and somewhat arrogantly. They looked at us as if we were aliens who came here to establish our own rules. But we didn’t impose anything on them. We only asked what they did and suggested what we would have done in each separate case. In general, our therapeutic approaches are similar, but attitudes to patients are different. One doctor even came up to me and asked haughtily: ‘Do you really mean to cure our patients with a tube of ointment?’ In return, I enquired for whatever reason local medics did not manage to buy even such a trifle with the money that the Americans allocated for this hospital. This ended the argument.”
We returned to our base camp in late afternoon, although we left in the morning for half an hour just to examine the girl. The girl’s brother traveled with us back to the camp to bring the medication for his sister. While we were on our way he talked emotionally to our interpreter. Although he spoke Arabic, from the way he talked, mentioning Saddam Hussein repeatedly, you could understand the plight faced by the whole people and the hopes it pins on the military, and Ukrainian peacekeepers in particular.
Upon our arrival at the joint aid post of the brigade, even before Mykhailo Yakymiv could get out of the car he was told there was another call from the police precinct. A local policeman has been shot, and they wanted him to examine the wound.
