Nearly 4,900 medical workers in Ukraine have contracted COVID‑19 since the beginning of the global pandemic, making up roughly 20 percent of all confirmed cases in the country. Out of this grim statistic is an even grimmer reality: 38 have died, while another 28 are currently on lung ventilators.
The pandemic caught Ukraine’s health care system in the middle of an ongoing reform which significantly cut state subsidies to public medical institutions in favor of compensation for the number of patients treated and actual services provided. According to the reform masterminds, this was supposed to raise the quality of public health care.
But Ukraine’s unpreparedness for COVID‑19 has exposed dire pre-existing conditions at public hospitals in regions, which lacked beds, drugs, equipment and protective gear. Many had to repurpose available units into infectious disease wards and depend heavily on volunteers and donors to fill the gaps.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus took its toll on health care professionals. Overwhelmed and desperate, they appealed for hazmat suits, respirator masks, goggles and other vital equipment.
The first infections were registered among general practitioners, ambulance paramedics and emergency physicians, as well as doctors, nurses and other staff at hospitals — those who were the first to see patients with symptoms and treat them.
Across the country, entire hospitals have been quarantined because of COVID‑19 outbreaks among their staff. The infections have also been registered among doctors and nurses at maternity hospitals, cancer hospitals and children’s hospitals.
Several western regions carried out mass testing of medical workers and other high-risk groups with rapid coronavirus tests in April, but large-scale antibody testing didn’t start until the end of May.
Bohdana Hrytsiv (Facebook)
Bohdana Hrytsiv, 41, was on the frontline.
In the district hospital in Kalush, a city of 67,000 people located 500 kilometers southwest of Kyiv in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, her portrait now hangs next to the X-ray room where she worked as a technician for 19 years.
Kalush hospital had its first patient with suspected COVID‑19 on March 1, although the diagnosis was never confirmed. After that, the hospital became overloaded with people returning from abroad or with symptoms of pneumonia, and every patient would come to Hrytsiv for a chest X-ray.
Her coworkers have no doubt that she got infected from one of the patients. She died on April 29 after over two weeks on a lung ventilator in the hospital’s intensive care unit. A polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test confirmed COVID‑19 after her death.
Kalush hospital has had a total of 16 medical staff who contracted COVID‑19, according to deputy director Bohdana Kudla. She said that, despite the lack of protective gear, in the early days of the crisis, the hospital always made sure Hrytsiv was provided with it, due to the increased risk.
“We miss her a lot. She was a sincere and compassionate person. She was always very attentive to patients,” Kudla told the Kyiv Post over the phone.
Hrytsiv is survived by her husband and two children. Her elderly mother also reportedly had COVID‑19 and recovered.
Maksym Belinov (Courtesy)
The death of Maksym Belinov, 47, an emergency physician at Odesa city clinical hospital no. 10, on May 16 prompted calls for better protection of all medical workers. He became the second doctor in the region to die from COVID‑19 after a 60-year-old general practitioner.
The hospital where Belinov worked was not among those designated for treating COVID‑19, and therefore was not on the priority list to receive supplies of protective gear from the health ministry, according to Kateryna Nozhevnikova, director of the Odesa-based charity foundation “Monsters, Inc.,” which has helped hospitals for many years.
Since hospital no. 10 provided urgent care, some of the patients it admitted turned out to have COVID‑19. In May, it closed for quarantine after nine medical staffers and nine patients tested positive for the disease.
Colleagues believe Belinov was infected by a patient diagnosed with pneumonia whose test for COVID‑19 proved positive only after their death.
“We understand that all doctors and nurses at any regular hospital are at risk now and should be provided with protective gear, at least for emergency rooms,” Nozehvnikova said.
“Hospitals can purchase what they need at their own expense, but we know how underfunded many are, especially, in regions.”
Tetyana Rozhniv (Facebook)
Tetyana Rozhniv, a longtime chief nurse at the premature infants unit in the Ivano-Frankivsk regional children’s hospital, died on May 30 at the age of 60.
Rozhniv felt sick on May 11. Her son, Oleg Rozhniv, believes she could have gotten infected at work. On May 4, it was reported that the hospital had five infected medical workers, including two doctors.
But Iryna Stefanyshyn, the head of the unit where Rozhniv worked, said nobody at their unit tested positive for COVID‑19, and she could have caught the virus outside of the hospital, perhaps in public transport.Rozhniv began working at Ivano-Frankivsk regional children’s hospital in 1979 as a nurse in the surgery unit straight out of medical college. In 1992, she transferred to the newly-opened unit for premature babies. In nearly three decades at this job, she cared for some 4,500 babies.
“Our team is still in shock. She was so energetic and cheerful. She was the core, the organizer, our second mother,” Stefanyshyn said. She and Rozhniv had worked side-by-side for 20 years.
Read more: Relatives of Ukraine’s coronavirus victims remember their loved ones
Here are several other Ukrainian healthcare professionals who died from the coronavirus:
Iryna Prykhodko (Courtesy)
Ihor Kovalyuk (Courtesy)
Ihor Zakala (Courtesy)
Iryna Prykhodko, 74, was a renowned pediatrician at the Ivano-Frankivsk children’s polyclinic. She died on April 9, but her PCR test only confirmed COVID‑19 on April 16.
She worked in medicine for 45 years. Former colleagues and patients described her as “a wonderful doctor and a great optimist.”
Ihor Kovalyuk, 58, was the chief doctor of the Ivano-Frankivsk emergency station. He died on May 10, six days after he tested positive for COVID‑19.
Kovalyuk dedicated most of his life, 36 years, to medicine. For the last 18 years, he was in charge of the emergency station.
Ihor Zakala, 58, was a top oncologist specializing in urinary tract cancers at the Prykarpattia Clinical Oncology Center in Ivano-Frankivsk. He had been in charge of the center’s clinic since 1995.
He was taken to the intensive care unit and put on a lung ventilator on April 28 and died on May 13.
The oncology center had 11 ill medical workers by May 25. Seven of them tested positive for COVID‑19.
Vsyl Kaminskyi (Courtesy)
Vasyl Kaminskyi, 46, was a general practitioner at the clinic of the Ivano-Frankivsk Medical University.
According to regional officials, he was in the hospital for two weeks before he died on May 27.
The university and the clinic staff said in a statement that he was “a God-given doctor and a best friend, who saved many lives over his long career in medicine.”
Iryna Fedoryshyn (Facebook)
Iryna Fedoryshyn, 64, was an anesthesiologist at the Lviv regional clinical hospital. She was taken to the infectious disease hospital in early May and died on May 25.
She had worked at the hospital for 37 years and possibly was infected from a patient with COVID‑19 in an intensive care unit.
An acquaintance described her to a local website LNM as “a deeply religious and patriotic person who loved Ukrainian tradition and folklore and was dedicated to her three grandchildren.”
Mykola Bozhuk, 65, was a general practitioner in Velykyi Bychkiv village in Zakarpattia Oblast.
He was retired, but continued to see patients in his village until he contracted COVID‑19. He died on April 10 at the regional infectious disease hospital in Uzhgorod.
Oleksandr Tenenyk, 68, was an emergency physician at the Kropyvnytsky emergency station in Kirovograd Oblast and died on April 17. His brother, pediatric anesthesiologist Yuriy Tenenyk, died on May 8 at the age of 63, also from COVID-19.
Zhanna Harasimyak, 48, was a junior nurse at the Lviv city clinical hospital no. 1. She died on May 14, ten days after a test confirmed she had COVID‑19. According to local media, she continued to work during the pandemic, despite being immunocompromised with diabetes. She was likely infected at the hospital.
