as the second wave of coronavirus
infections grips europe the pandemic is
stretching health care systems to
breaking point
ukraine's underfunded hospitals are
struggling to keep up with the surge in
patient numbers
amid the spike frontline medical workers
are among those
suffering most
i knew that i'd get sick eventually when
i got the news that i was infected it
was such a blow
i cried i'd done all i could to stay
safe this place is my baby
no one ever saw me here without a mask
my name is olena kravchuk i'm a senior
doctor here at the hospital in liubar
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most of the doctors and nurses here have
gone through covid
we had a big outbreak here in the town
with as many as 58 new patients in just
one day many of them were very ill
i'm a neuropathologist by training but i
had to learn how to operate a ventilator
there was no choice
a patient was dying and i didn't know
what to do
i did some reading and called my husband
who's an anesthetist
he was telling me what to do over the
phone on the loudspeaker
and it worked it's hard to explain just
how happy i was
one of my father's friends is in our
intensive care unit right now
you're always aware that your own
parents could soon be patients here
i was lucky i didn't get pneumonia and
was back at work two weeks later
our main problem is that people come in
too late many with very serious
pneumonia
some tell you they don't have money
others don't believe
covet even exists they say it's just the
flu
this most definitely isn't the flu
the most precious thing right now is
oxygen you can see the patient's hands
stretching out for the masks
you can see how desperately they need it
you see how they come to life once they
get it even trying to turn the dial up
on their own
i go to bed imagining what would happen
if we run out of oxygen supplies
i'm sure it will happen eventually
will we have to slam the doors shut in
patients faces
and tell them we've run out
i'm joined now by dw correspondent nick
connolly in kiev
nick some very dramatic scenes there
tell us how dramatic is the situation in
hospitals across the country
good morning record what is
extraordinarily difficult we've seen
cases here
up to about 13 14 000 new cases every
day that's double what it was just a
month ago
and that hospital even though maybe the
conditions there could look basic to
someone
who's more used to hospital settings in
western europe or north america that is
a pretty
good pretty well resourced hospital by
the standards of provincial ukraine
this is really a country with huge
discrepancies between the big cities and
the smaller towns and villages
as we heard there from that doctor
oxygen is a big problem
this is not a disease that doctors are
able to treat right now this is about
keeping people going
while their body deals with this viral
infection
and that doctor told us that their
hospital their their supplies of oxygen
they
are lasting for a couple they have extra
supplies for a couple of hours so if
those supplies if those trucks bringing
oxygen from the nearest big town were to
stop if there was cold weather
and that truck were to break down they
would really have to make choices about
who would get oxygen it's not about that
just about that it's also about medical
staff this is a country where doctors
are not paid well
even by local standards thousands of
doctors have left for neighbouring
countries
and they're really running out of people
to look after all these people that
doctor in our report she is a
neurologist having to learn
on the job while saving people's lives
how to operate a ventilator so this is
really a situation that isn't looking
good and that is getting more difficult
as this winter season increases indeed
and we've heard that some people don't
even go to hospital
because they may not have the money how
well does the health system
work in general
so in theory people do get free medical
care in practice often they're expected
to pay for drugs
pay for various materials but this
wasn't a system that was particularly
strong and well resourced at the best of
times so the kind of pandemic like this
was obviously
going to be a huge challenge anyway um i
think this is also a bigger problem of
governance isn't just about
the ability of doctors with or without
resources to treat this disease this is
about
a national response in an infectious
disease situation like this and
president olenska ukraine's president
would seem to have had
a relatively good first wave of
coronavirus understanding that the
country didn't have the resources to
treat or to
to track traces particularly effectively
he basically closed down this country
for months at a time in the spring the
metro here in capital kiev was out of
operation for weeks at an end
all businesses were shut and now
basically the country's decided all the
government decided that they can't
afford a rerun of that they don't have
the money to give businesses
and to give employees money to stay at
home and so we now have
a situation where there's basically kind
of symbolic quarantine on weekends
businesses shut on weekends
in practice lots of uh big cities
outside of kiev have told
the central government to get lost and
are basically continuing as usual and
lots of people are thinking about
uh their business survival and
bankruptcy rather than the actual uh
infection numbers that are jumping up
here so very difficult winter
in the weeks ahead yeah very difficult
situation ndw correspondent nick
connolly thanks very much
let's take a look at some other
developments in the pandemic
chile has reopened its borders to
international visitors after an
eight-month shutdown
arriving passengers will have to present
evidence of a recent negative test and
undergo a two-week surveillance period
china says it's ramped up its testing of
frozen foods
authorities say it comes after they
repeatedly found traces of the
coronavirus on imported products and
their packaging and spain
says it will begin a comprehensive
vaccination program in january
prime minister pedro sanchez says a
quote substantial part of the population
will be able to be vaccinated in the
first three months of the year
you