Russia's war in Ukraine has unleashed at least 700 attacks on the nation's health care facilities and workers since the full-scale invasion began on Feb. 24, according to the World Health Organization.
"WHO has verified more than 700 attacks on health care, impacting facilities, supplies, transport, and other means, injuring and killing health care workers and patients," WHO's Ukraine representative, Dr. Jarno Habicht, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
"This marks a clear violation of international law," he said. "Health should never be a target."
Habicht said the U.N. health agency, in coordination with national and international partners, continues to deliver life-saving medical supplies amid the attacks throughout the war-torn country, particularly to areas that Ukrainian forces have newly recaptured from the Russian military.
That includes distributing supplies to more than 10,000 people in the eastern city of Bakhmut, where some of the worst fighting has occurred and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid a visit on Tuesday to Ukrainian troops.
He said the supplies being distributed to tens of thousands of other people in Ukraine's cities, such as Kherson and Dnipro, include medicine, trauma kits, power generators and ambulances, along with the provision of WHO's acute trauma care and primary care and training for Ukraine health care workers.
The power generators help ensure hospitals can keep functioning amid power cuts. Together with more than 100 partners, he said, WHO has reached around 9 million in more than 770 settlements across Ukraine.
Scaling-up mental health and psychosocial services in war-affected regions: best practices from Ukrainehttps://t.co/UKwmVJoDWK
— WHO Ukraine (@WHOUkraine) December 19, 2022
Mental health care in focus
But with winter approaching, there are many concerns about how Ukrainians will fare, including their mental health needs.
Earlier this month, Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and First Lady Olena Zelenska held a high-level meeting to unveil a new WHO-supported "roadmap" on mental health and psychosocial support for Ukrainians during and beyond the war. Some 1,000 experts from national and international organizations helped craft it.
"The mental health impacts of this war cannot go unnoticed," said Habicht, noting that WHO estimates up to 10 million Ukrainians are at risk of suffering from disorders "varying from anxiety and stress to more severe conditions."
Habicht said during winter an increase in diseases and health needs is expected as people struggle to heat their homes and battle with the freezing temperatures.
"First, we see respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, but also cardiovascular diseases, to be more prevalant, and that will mean we need to actually scale up the health care during the ongoing war," said Habicht.
"Second, ongoing attacks on energy and heating infrastructure across the whole country will decrease availability of health services," he said, "and that will additionally pose also challenges for logistics, transport for people across the whole country who are struggling to have access to basic care."
A third concern is the use of alternative sources of heating to make up for power cuts and outages.
"As people resort to alternative sources of heating for their homes such as coal and wood and using diesel-fueled generators or electric heaters," he cautioned, "we see the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning will increase as well the other risks."
