In addition to providing emergency treatment, our teams developed rehabilitation projects, including care for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and physiotherapy, to cater to patients’ longer-term needs.

In 2023, we used specially designed medical trains to evacuate patients from frontline areas to safer places where they could receive the specialised care they needed. At the end of the year, this service wound down due to a shift in needs, while our ambulance service scaled up to focus on emergency care. Of the many thousands of patients we referred, almost 60 per cent were treated for violent trauma.

Our teams supported the emergency department and surgical and intensive care units at Kostiantynivka and Selydove hospitals in Donetsk region until the end of 2023, when the frequency and proximity of shelling became too dangerous to safely maintain a continuous staff presence. However, we established and managed to maintain a constant presence in a hospital in Kherson city, supporting trauma and surgical care.

Mental health support remained a crucial component of our response. In September, we started providing specialised psychotherapeutic services for people experiencing PTSD symptoms at a new centre in Vinnytsia region. In a shelter run by local organisations in Zernove, Kharkiv region, we offered psychological care to people who had moved from Russia and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine.

MSF also ran early rehabilitation projects for war-wounded people in Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Sumy and Vinnytsia regions, implementing a multidisciplinary approach comprising physiotherapy, psychological support and nursing care. 

We continued to run mobile clinics delivering a range of services, including basic healthcare, emergency surgery and treatment for chronic conditions, in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Donetsk regions, where many patients were elderly people. 

Throughout the year, we donated medicines and medical supplies to dozens of health facilities and conducted training for health professionals and first responders.