Dr Morten Rostrup from Norway is working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine. Here, he and a team are providing medical consultations in the underground stations where people are sheltering from the country’s war. This is his first-hand account of what he saw and of the stories of people he met.
She was sitting on a bench in front of me at one of the metro stations in Kharkiv. Since the war broke out, the stations have functioned as shelters and thousands of people are sleeping on the platforms and in the train carriages. The woman had been thrown out of bed when a rocket hit her apartment building.She had seen her aunt killed a few metres away from her. She couldn’t talk about it but burst into a flood of tears as she sat looking downwards. She was shaking. She wasn’t alone in seeking medical care this evening. There were many others. A seven-year-old girl who had constant nightmares and was afraid of falling asleep. People experiencing physical pains they couldn’t explain. People who felt like they couldn’t breathe. A woman with sky-high blood pressure who was at risk of having a stroke.An old man who showed me pictures of his three grandchildren. One of the children had been killed in an airstrike two days earlier, the other two were in hospital, one of them critically injured. The children’s father was also killed. The old man had suffered a stroke and had high blood pressure. He couldn’t sleep.
DR MORTEN ROSTRUP, RIGHT, PROVIDING A CONSULTATION“I have seen the despair, the lack of hope; the confusion, the inability to comprehend how they have ended up in this situation... I've seen the fear... and how some people collapse in terror when the sound of airstrikes fills the air.”
I have had many moving encounters with different people over these past few weeks. Our team travels from one metro station to the next. In the evenings we carry out dozens of medical consultations before pulling out our sleeping bags and spending the night there.
I have seen the despair, the lack of hope; the confusion, the inability to comprehend how they have ended up in this situation. Losing family members and friends, losing their homes, losing the future they had envisioned for themselves. I have seen the constant fear experienced by so many, and how some people collapse in terror when the sound of airstrikes fills the air.