Médecins Sans Frontières - OLEG Story: "I’d been through many things in my life, but I’d never experienced anything like it.”

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSF249671

Date taken / Date Recorded 16/08/2018 12:00 AM

Country Belarus

Detailed location Minsk

Commissioning section MSF-NETHERLANDS

Photographer / videographer / producer Viviane Dalles

Copyright Viviane Dalles

Usage Rights (MSF) External Media, MSF Fundraising, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available yes

Editor's rating ★★★ (F)

Maximum Size 5976px × 3984px 18.07 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist OLEG
“I would lie down and I have excruciating pains in my body like a drug addict. I was tired. I’d been through many things in my life – surgeries, oncological condition, but I’d never experienced anything like it.” Oleg

Oleg, 46, is from Ukraine. He lives now in Minsk. He is completing out-patient treatment at TB Dispensary 2.

“I was born in Turkmenistan, I studied in a military school in Ukraine and stayed there to live, I’m Russian by ethnicity, I came to Belarus because my father who is a military had been transferred here and my parents live here. I divorced in Ukraine, my son is a grown up, he is 25. We were three brothers and we hadn’t met each other for 17 years, and then we met here and decided we’d all move here as our younger brother was here. But we didn’t make it: our elder brother died at the age of 42. But I moved and started the process with the documents.”

Oleg was on treatment for TB but was not getting any better. Even if he would feel unwell his treating doctor would say: “Nothing has been changed in your treatment at the consilium, you continue to take the same medicines”. In July 2016, he was feeling worse. He has one son, 25 years old, from the first marriage, who lives in Ukraine. So at that time he was single and supported only by his mother. Then he met a MSF counsellor Lena working there, and was told he should approach MSF, Doctors Without Borders, that they could help him. He had no choice and didn’t believe in anything already. He approached Mathilde, MSF doctor. She listened to his story, and then, sometime after she told him that the decision had been approved to support his treatment. Thanks to MSF’s programme Oleg was put on treatment with new drugs – first bedaquiline, but then it was changed to delamanid. Dmitry, MSF counsellor, provided him psychological counselling. In April 2017, he was transferred to outpatient treatment, in TB Dispensary 2. He had appetite again. MSF staff would call him and visit him. “All this support has a very good impact. I was taking these drugs, and I started gaining weight.” Oleg
He met his current wife, Larisa, 40, at the dispensary. She works there as a nurse. Oleg will complete his treatment by the end of 2018. He is still considered as Ukrainian citizen, but he wants to apply for Belarussian citizenship. Roman, MSF social worker, will help him to get through the paperwork.