CHICAGO — Catholic health care organizations in Ukraine are stepping up to meet the ongoing dire physical, psychological and spiritual needs of victims of war.
The Reverend Andriy Lohin, a medical doctor and director of Sheptytsky Hospital, and Dr. Oksana Kovalska, director of the UCU Medical Clinic, presented their organizations’ work and growing mission at CNEWA’s administrative center in New York on 24 April.
The visit came a day after Russia launched a massive missile attack on Kyiv — the largest on the Ukrainian capital since last summer. The bombing lasted 11 hours, killing at least 12 people and injuring about 90, according to The Associated Press.
Speaking through an interpreter, Father Lohin said Sheptytsky Hospital has added several departments since Russia’s first incursion into the eastern region of Ukraine in 2014. The first was a mental health department in 2015 to treat people who had fled the violence in Donetsk.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sheptytsky Hospital, founded in Lviv in 1903, had opened two new facilities in central Ukraine by summer 2023. The first is in Ternopil, 80 miles east of Lviv, a city that had welcomed tens of thousands of internally displaced people from the east. The second is in Irpin, just northwest of Kyiv — a city that was severely bombed and occupied for a short time by the Russian forces.
Last year, with CNEWA funding, the Lviv campus completed the renovation of a facility dedicated to physical therapy and rehabilitation medicine — an ever-increasing need since the war began. It opened last September and treats 50 patients a day, he said.
The Sheptytsky Hospital “offers quality holistic care” according to Catholic values and Catholic social teaching principles, he said. “Medical chaplains are an inseparable part of our program.”
Since military hospitals are overrun, public and private hospitals in Ukraine now see military cases as well, which was not the case prior to the war, he said, putting additional strain on hospitals and health care centers.
An important service for Sheptytsky Hospital is palliative care, which is difficult to come by in Ukraine, said Father Lohin. The hospital’s palliative care department, which focuses on improving the quality of life for those patients suffering from chronic illnesses or diseases, was also started with CNEWA funding. The department has 23 beds, as well as a mobile unit that provides home care to dozens of patients.
The three hospital centers have 254 employees, including medical professionals who fled regions on the front line, and offer basic humanitarian assistance to those in need, in addition to medical care. Combined, they have treated more than 270,000 patients since the war started in 2022. The hospital receives most of its funding from charitable organizations.
In response to the needs created by the war, Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) also established an outpatient clinic in Lviv with CNEWA funding last spring.
The clinic is part of the university’s health sciences faculty and offers family medicine, including pediatric care, mental health care and physical and occupational therapy, said Dr. Oksana Kovalska, director of UCU’s medical clinic.
The initial plan for this facility in 2016 was for it to serve as a rehabilitation center, but the start of the war led organizers to rethink its purpose to help heal the wounds of war and provide psychological support for those impacted by the war.
The new medical clinic’s doors opened to patients last June and now provides up to 3,000 treatments to about 600 patients per month. The clinic has provided 14,000 consultations or procedures since it opened, Dr. Kovalska said.
Republished with permission of CNEWA.
