According to AFP, Alla Trubacheva, who has worked as a doctor in eastern Ukraine for 40 years, wanted to stay in the bombed-out industrial city of Siversk as patients continued to flock to her small practice.

Buried in front of the hospital

The hospital where he worked in this city of 10,000 people was bombed by Russian troops and turned into ruins.

One of her colleagues, killed by artillery fire, is buried outside. Hospital staff and patients have long since left the area.

When rockets They laughed trees and houses near her home, she was about to leave.

But “people say they need me,” she told AFP. “There is only me left, the only family doctor, the woman who has to do it all,” she continued.

The exodus of patients, the bombing of hospitals, and the military’s new triage system for wounded soldiers turned medical practice upside down.

Patients come to the doctor day and night, the busiest time is on Monday.

“He would die”

“Headaches, neck pain, high blood pressure, stress, insomnia, you see everything,” she told AFP.

Last year, one of the 200 patients he follows with notes in a school notebook had a blocked trachea.

“I don’t want to brag too much, but if I hadn’t been there, he would have died,” she says.

“Medicines are still needed, especially in times of war”

The muffled sounds of distant gunfire echo with birdsong in her garden. A piece of rocket, covered in spring flowers, sits in the ground under a fruit tree.

According to Ukrainian authorities, Russian forces killed at least 106 medical workers and destroyed or damaged more than 540 medical facilities.

This list includes Ms. Trubachova’s colleague, the only one who stayed with her in Siversk. The hospital where he worked was destroyed.

Several graves were recently dug under the collapsed roof of the abandoned facility, which housed 250 patients.

Broken glass and bricks cover the hospital floor, and dust accumulates in the operating rooms.

“No One Goes Away”

Currently, 25 elderly Ukrainians, displaced by the Russian offensive, are living in basements to protect themselves from strikes.

In July of last year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the civilians to leave, but the hospital lasted another six months.

“All bedridden patients who were injured or could not walk were evacuated,” says 51-year-old nurse Olena, who stayed at the hospital, where she distributes medicine to those who come.

“Bombings happen every day. The houses were destroyed a long time ago,” she says.

Alla Trubacheva managed to save equipment from a bombed-out hospital laboratory and has a sufficient supply in her small office, in addition to humanitarian aid.

At the same time, medical vehicles are plying the roads of the Donetsk region damaged by tanks, helping wounded soldiers in the trenches.

“The army has its own medical facilities, as well as a system of civilian hospitals,” she explains, although she is ready to admit a soldier and give him painkillers for a headache.

What does she advise those who are overcome by stress? “Go away! If people say they can’t sleep or feel sick, I tell them to go away,” she says, lamenting that many ignore the advice.

“People are tied to their place of residence. It’s scary, but no one is leaving,” she says.