On Thursday, the 19th of December, Riga Eastern Clinical University Hospital (Eastern Hospital), in cooperation with the charity project “M Help.com”, received Ukrainian soldiers severely injured in the war started by Russia for the 21st time in cooperation.
Doctors at the Eastern Hospital, who have been working with the Ukrainian wounded soldiers for more than two years, admit:
the profile of the Ukrainian soldier has changed, and the most significant changes are related to the psycho-emotional state of these people.
In total, the Eastern Hospital, which has been providing assistance to the injured population of Ukraine for more than two years, has received 416 patients brought from Ukraine since the beginning of the war. A long way to Latvia’s largest hospital this time was taken by 29 war victims, who were welcomed by Juris Nikolajenko, the director of treatment at the Eastern Hospital, and representatives of the hospital, as well as Anatolii Kutsevol, the authorized ambassador of Ukraine to the Republic of Latvia. As usual, patients were admitted to the Eastern Hospital by a multidisciplinary team of medical doctors and nursing staff from the Emergency Medicine and Patient Admission Clinic (NMPUK).
Since the day when the Eastern Hospital welcomed the first bus with Ukrainian soldiers on the 8th of August, 2022, the head of NMPUK Aleksejs Višņakovs has been actively involved in the reception of victims.
“From day one, we were convinced that medical support for war victims was what we could and wanted to do. But then none of us knew that this cruel war would last so long and that in 2024 the last Thursday of every month in our clinic would be Ukraine Day. Living in peace, we are accustomed to the war around us and seem to perceive it quite differently than we did almost three years ago. But when I see people who have had to go to hell defending their country and are fortunate enough to survive, I realize that you cannot and should not get used to war. Not only soldiers, but also women and children who were tortured, with physical and psychological injuries, are hoping for recovery when they come to us. In their eyes there is a deep misfortune, hatred of the enemy and also hope for victory. They desperately need our support, so we do it with pride and honor. And every time we expect another bus from Ukraine, we hope there will be peace soon,” said Aleksejs Višņakovs.
The profile of the Ukrainian soldier has changed, and the most significant changes are related to the psycho-emotional state of these people, – the head of the Traumatology and Orthopedics Clinic of the Eastern Hospital Andris Vikmanis shares his observations, who, like a colleague, works with the injured from the first day in 2022.
“Initially, the soldiers were optimistic and actively discussed various socially relevant topics, including war, with great respect for the hospital doctors and staff, but are now quiet gloomy and depressed on a daily basis.
They don’t actually talk about the war and what they have experienced there. In conversations with doctors, they briefly tell how and with which weapon the injury occurred. They are used to and live with physical pain, as well as are very grateful to Latvian doctors for operating and providing assistance,” admits Andris Vikmanis.
Describing the injuries, necessary surgery and patients’ psycho-emotional state, Andris Vikmanis explains: “Injuries to war injuries are characterized by high energies and large, cruel distortions of the human body. These are large and voluminous soft tissue defects and infections that are difficult to treat with effective antibiotics due to the presence of resistance. Patients affected by the war are treated in several successive stages, where the operation is followed by rehabilitation and then repeated surgical intervention. Soldiers are forced to undergo long-term treatment in order to be able to mitigate the consequences of injuries and distortions. It takes willpower and not giving up, but a person’s psycho-emotional state suffers more than physical injuries.”
At the same time, the process of treating the injured population of Ukraine has created new models of cooperation and understanding between the doctors of the Eastern Hospital and other specialists.
“In the daily work of our doctors, it was the treatment of war wounds that brought valuable experience of cooperation and skill development. Treatment of war patients is always a joint effort involving doctors of many profiles – traumatologists, surgeons, microsurgeons, infectologists, physicians of physical and rehabilitation medicine, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, radiologists and laboratory specialists. Coordinated action is important, and we provide that,” said Andris Vikmanis, stressing that “seeing how Ukrainians support each other and are united in their vision for the future, we feel inspired to help even more”.
All patients arriving from Ukraine are subject to a comprehensive medical assessment, including various laboratory tests, at the Eastern Hospital. At least 10 different test samples have to be collected for each patient and tested at the Laboratory Service of the Eastern Hospital for at least 27 different parameters, including the possible presence of multidrug-resistant infections, as they flare up and spread rapidly in wartime. For several victims, additional radiological examinations have been carried out by the Emergency Radiology Department to clarify the condition of the injuries.
This time, three soldiers who suffered very serious war injuries will be treated in the specialized clinics of the Eastern Hospital, all of whom will be treated in a microsurgery profile – under the guidance of micro-surgeons Mārtiņš Kapickis and Jānis Zariņš. Soldiers will undergo several complex and consecutive surgical operations in several stages. Physiotherapists, occupational therapists, rehabilitation specialists and functional specialists will work with the injured soldiers after these complex and severe war trauma operations.
In turn, the rest of the victims will go to other Latvian medical institutions after the examinations at NMPUK, depending on the specifics of the consequences of injuries. It is planned that one patient will continue treatment in the Hospital of Traumatology and Orthopaedics. Ten patients will be transferred to the National Rehabilitation Center “Vaivari”, nine patients to the rehabilitation centre “Jaunkemeri”, while six patients will be transported to the rehabilitation centre “Ligatne” for further long-term rehabilitation.
Patients affected by the Ukrainian war are reminded to the Eastern hospital thanks to a private initiative of the founders of the charity project “M-Help.com” Arvis Rekets and Mārtiņš Medinieks. In turn, the Georgy Logvinsky Charity Foundation, which operates in Ukraine, has equipped and rebuilt a bus that provides transportation for these patients.