By Lauren Rutledge | Senior Manager
On the morning of February 24th, 2022, Russian forces launched a multi-pronged invasion by land, air, and sea on Ukraine. The brutal conflict continues unabated. Even as Ukrainian forces made ground gains in the first year, strikes by Russia against Ukraine on civilian targets exacerbated concern for humanitarian needs in winter.
Since the day of the invasion, 14.6 million people need humanitarian assistance and nearly 5.9 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded across Europe. In Ukraine, 3.6 million people are internally displaced, and 6.9 million people are sheltering in place.
More than two years of war has caused widespread destruction, reducing some cities to rubble, damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes along with critical infrastructure and leaving millions of people with limited or no access to electricity, water or heat. Many people are living either in collective centers or damaged buildings, without basic needs for daily life and vulnerable to a range of health threats.
Internally displaced persons living in collective centers are most at risk with the majority being women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.
Since the start of war, Americares has been working closely with local organizations to meet health needs. Many stories have emerged. Scroll down and meet some of the extraordinary people and organizations who have shared their stories.
People living in Ukraine face barriers to care: a shrinking health workforce (due to safety concerns and displacement), rising healthcare costs, declining or disappearing incomes and mass displacement. The WHO reports roughly one-third of people in active combat zones or Russian-controlled areas report they cannot access the medicines they need. Children and adults are going without vital vaccines, and people with chronic conditions – such as diabetes or dementia – have suffered dangerous interruptions in care.
In the two years since the start of the war, we have provided total aid valued at more than $121 million to 83 local organizations assisting those affected by the war. The aid includes grants and shipments of medicine and medical supplies, including those delivered by volunteer Medical Outreach teams.
To date, Americares has awarded 117 emergency grants valued at more than $5.3 million to 62 organizations working in Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. The support helps local organizations meet a wide range of critical health needs from tourniquets and tactical trauma care for civilians in Ukraine to the delivery of essential oncological medicines to a Children’s Medical Center.
Americares partner network in Ukraine includes lean, community-rooted organizations that reach vulnerable populations who lack access to health facilities as well as large, highly specialized partners fully integrated into the national health system. This robust partner network allows Americares to meet needs across the health spectrum.
Two years into the full-scale invasion, Americares focuses its support on local organizations in Ukraine, providing them with medicine, medical and relief supplies, technical support and training, while mainstreaming protection work to reach populations most in need of humanitarian aid, including women, children and older people.
We are now focusing our response in three main areas:
These response areas overlap: When possible, Americares links mental health and psychosocial support with medicine security interventions. For example, Americares has acquired medicines and medical supplies for psychological boarding houses in central Ukraine, offered grant support to acquire generators for mental health facilities as part of the winterization strategy and provided grant funds for the purchase of specialty medicines for a psychiatric care health facility.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
