Russian bombing and looting<\/a> of healthcare facilities and infrastructure in Ukraine, health and social workers still in the country have continued to support their clients who have left, sending them medications and monitoring their health from a distance.<\/p>\nChallenging transition<\/h2>\n
As well as visiting his clients still in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, social worker Serhiy Pidvalyuk from the NGO Kryvyi Rih Public Health Foundation is now used to parcelling up six-month supplies of ARVs and dispatching them, with an accompanying letter from the healthcare facility, to his clients in Poland, Germany and Turkey. \u2018They are scared to reveal their status, so it\u2019s easier this way,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n
The patients use private clinics abroad to measure their health and disease indicators, like CD4 and viral load, and send the results back to doctors in Ukraine via online messengers. After six months, Pidvalyuk encourages his clients who are still abroad to register with healthcare systems in their new place. \u2018We have no right to force them to do so,\u2019 he adds, \u2018but we cannot support them forever.\u2019<\/p>\n
Though the Ukrainian case management system has been invaluable in supporting patients through a difficult transition, it has a downside. Volunteers, Ukrainian social workers and medics all say that Ukrainian refugees can be very passive when it comes to resolving issues abroad because they are used to relying on their case managers.<\/p>\n
\u2018Case management is a process of leading people by the hand. In some ways it is wonderful, but in other ways it\u2019s a problem,\u2019 says Mariia Ralko, a volunteer with HelpNow in Poland. \u2018Now when clients go abroad, they just sit and wait for someone to help them.\u2019<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, other European countries could learn something from Ukraine\u2019s approach to HIV. \u2018Maybe Ukrainians will change the medical systems in Europe,\u2019 Aryabinska says. \u2018In Poland there\u2019s no medical-social support, and people don\u2019t understand what we do. But now they have started to ask us for expertise, and compare the systems of service provision.\u2019<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Aryabinska has used her Ukraine experience to set up the first self-help group for HIV-positive people and members of vulnerable groups in Poland. \u2018I really missed live meetings and the sense of community,\u2019 she adds. \u2018And people come from all over Poland, at their own expense, so I see it\u2019s not just me who needs it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reporting for this piece took place during an assignment for the Alliance for Public Health, documenting the organisation\u2019s programmes in response to the war in Ukraine. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Anna Aryabinska fled from Kyiv in March 2022 with her ex-partner\u2019s children, she had little idea that she would end up supporting not only his family, but many HIV-positive Ukrainians in Poland. Until Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, Aryabinska had been an activist for the Ukrainian organisation Positive Women, supporting women with HIV. Now she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alabamadigitalnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}