Radio telemedicine in Ukraine under missile attacks: What is the reason why Ukraine does not act like a country of its citizens? A case study of Olena Isayenko

The local official told CNN that one of the largest state hospitals in eastern Ukraine was on the verge of removing patients after it lost water supply due to the Russian missile barrage.

The Kyiv Regional Clinical Hospital was about to move patients undergoing dialysis treatment, which requires an uninterrupted water supply, the deputy head of the region’s military administration said in a phone interview.

In the freezing winter months, millions of civilians inUkraine have no electricity, heat, water, or other critical services because of persistent Russia attacks on the energy grid. The Russian government uses missiles and drones to attack the civilian infrastructure in the Ukranian region and is in violation of the laws of war according to experts.

Ukraine’s minister of health, Viktor Liashko, told national TV on Friday that each hospital with an ICU and operating room had a generator and the government was bringing in additional generators to further increase capacity.

For Olena Isayenko, the beeping sound her oxygen machine makes when disconnected from power is far scarier than the screeching of the air raid sirens now commonly heard throughout Kyiv.

She suffers from respiratory failure, meaning that she cannot breathe adequately on her own and must receive a constant flow of Oxygen through an electrical twinning just to stay alive.

Green tubes carrying oxygen run across Isayenko’s face as she speaks with CNN at the home she shares with her husband, on the 15th floor of a residential block in Kyiv. Her portable machine is what keeps her going. Isayenko is worried more about her lack of power than the air raid sirens that make it hard to get to the bomb shelter.

This machine makes a long beep when there is no power, it reminds me of when I was in intensive care surrounded by many machines. It sounds like a flatline,” she told CNN.

Her family decided that it was too risky to stay at home because of her general condition, which worsened over the course of a month. They went to the hospital because the electricity supply is mostly undamaged. I felt like I was in the water when I got to the hospital, and I thought I was about to faint. And the oxygen saturation in my blood was dropping quickly,” she said.

When the attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure intensified in October, the non-profit SVOI Foundation anticipated the likely disruption in lifesaving at-home care. Patients were warned to be ready by the foundation as at- home care requirements increased during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It advised people to purchase generators and told patients to have doctors’ referrals ready for hospital visits in case their at-home devices stopped working, according to Iryna Koshkina, executive director of the SVOI Foundation.

People living in high-rise blocks can’t use generators since the price has doubled since the beginning of the blackouts.

The foundation knows of patients who have spent hours hooked up to their cars to charge their medical devices through the vehicles’ cigarette lighters, she said. So far, Koshkina has not heard of anyone dying because of lack of electricity. There were cases of emergency hospitalization, but we did not know about them.

The Ukrainian health authorities have not given official comment on the situation of people who need a continuous power supply to operate medical equipment at home.

Lyudmyla Kaminska, a toy soldier and the fight against cancer, what happened when he was trapped underwater in a power blackout

A battle is being fought to save the life of his grandpa, Lyudmyla Kaminska. He has a lung disease that can cause mucus build-up. Treatment using a nebulizer, a machine that turns liquid medications into a mist he can inhale, is essential up to eight times a day “otherwise his lungs are blocked and he won’t be able to breathe. She told CNN that it was suffocating underwater.

Sevastian sits on the floor playing with his toy tanks as Kaminska explains the first time he experienced a power blackout. “He was so scared, he was choking,” she said. They took his nebulizer and hurried around looking for a generator they could use to power it, eventually finding one in shop. Now, when there is a power cut, they go to a school or a shop where they know there is a generator they can use.

“They are doing all this to threaten us, to scare us… but we don’t want to become scared. We are free and can’t be broken. She said that the disease did not break the children.