MSF´s run mobile clinics have been helping people affected by the conflict in Ukraine for almost five years. They provided more than 300,000 medical consultations and mental health sessions in dozens of villages and remote communities. As the national healthcare system in the area recovers, MSF has gradually phased out its mobile clinics in winter 2019.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine broke out in April of 2014 and heavily affected the lives of people there.

During the most intense periods of the conflict in 2014 and 2015, MSF provided support to people affected by the conflict on the both sides of the contact line - through medical supplies to hospitals as well as donations of essential household items and mental health support to people who had fled their homes.

In February 2015, MSF launched its first mobile clinic in order to provide primary health care and psychological support to displaced people, and soon after expanded to the most vulnerable individuals living near the contact line.

„Many health facilities were damaged or destroyed. Lots of health workers working in the villages left, seeking safety in towns or abroad. The rural communities along the contact line lost access to primary healthcare. Moreover, roads were damaged and public transportation disrupted," described Grigor Simonyan, MSF's head of mission in Ukraine.

MSF mobile clinics met their patients at their villages. At some places they worked in abandoned health facilities, at other places in schools or at someone's house. MSF team consisted of a doctor, nurse (or two), a psychologist and sometimes a health promoter.

At the peak MSF ran mobile clinics in 28 locations in Donetsk oblast, with four teams based out of Mariupol and Kurakhove. "We had a cohort of 3,000 patients on regular treatment at that time. Most of them suffered from non-communicable chronic diseases that required them to take medication routinely. They were seniors in most cases, as young people had mostly left. And the majority were women, their life expectancy is around 10 years higher than mens' in Ukraine," Grigor Simonyan says.

Chronic diseases are often linked with age. They include cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure or diabetes. Stress and lack of healthcare - as a result of the conflict - worsened the condition of many patients. A lot of patients in eastern Ukraine suffer also from anxiety, fear, panic attacks. Sometimes they have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. That's why mobile clinics also provided them with individual or group sessions with a psychologist.

Late in 2019 the time has come to phase out the mobile clinics. The healthcare system in the government-controlled area is recovering. The Ukrainian Ministry of Health increased its activities near the contact line. Many health facilities have been repaired and reopened. But at the same time it is often difficult for elderly people get to towns to visit their doctors.
So MSF doesn't leave these patients behind. The organization is changing the way how it supports them in order to do not duplicate recovering healthcare system while maintaining access to it for patients in remote or hardly accessible villages.