The conflict in Ukraine has sparked a global health crisis. The war’s impact on Ukraine’s healthcare infrastructure is profound, with estimates of at least 8 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and millions more in need of humanitarian assistance — including in the mental health space. Longevity Live Paid Content.
For Ron Gutman, a healthcare entrepreneur and co-founder of Intrivo Diagnostics, it’s clear that providing aid to support Ukraine’s healthcare infrastructure is essential as the country continues to resist Russia’s invasion. This is why Gutman and the charitable organization On/Go for Good are helping support the construction of a new Mental Health Center for Kids and Teens, which will be housed as a separate ward in the St. Nicholas Hospital in Lviv, Ukraine. The services of psychologists, psychotherapists, and psychiatrists, group therapies, individual consulting, art therapy sessions, and more will be offered free of charge.
And not a moment too soon
According to the World Health Organization, in the midst of war, “Around 10% percent of the people who experience traumatic events will have serious mental health problems, and another 10% will develop behavior that will hinder their ability to function effectively.”
Said Andriy Moskalenko, Lviv’s first deputy mayor, “The Mental Health Center will operate at St. Nicholas Hospital. This institution has a team of professionals who can bring children back to normal life. The second year of the full-scale invasion shows that not just surgery or physical treatment is essential but also psychological assistance.”
Ron Gutman’s History of Helping Ukraine
Gutman’s support for war-torn Ukraine started in 2022 after he traveled there to donate $1 million in COVID-19 tests, as well as computers and software, to Ukrainian hospitals through the On/Go for Good charity.
“It’s very easy to just say, ‘OK, here’s some money, or here’s some things you have to do with it,’” says Gutman. “That’s nice, too, but it’s one thing, and then going and deeply understanding what they really need is another. We ended up bringing computers. You don’t think, initially, that this is going to be the problem. We started by donating tests, but we ended up donating computers and software and other things because they didn’t have the hardware infrastructure to manage the flow of people.”
Damage to Medical Infrastructure
According to Health Policy Watch, the deliberate targeting of health facilities by the Russian army has resulted in the destruction of 171 medical facilities in Ukraine, with at least another 1,200 between 10% and 90% damaged.
The war has led to a surge in casualties and displacement of people, putting immense stress on hospitals and healthcare workers. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimated that about 17.6 million Ukrainians, or 43% of Ukraine’s population, will need humanitarian assistance in 2023. Among them, 45% are women, 23% are children, and 15% are people with disabilities.
The onset of the war also hindered Ukraine’s ability to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a National Institutes of Health report, the country’s vaccination rate was just 36% in 2022.
On/Go for Good’s donation addressed the urgent need for diagnostic tests.
Gutman saw the infrastructure and staffing needs and the importance of having available COVID tests as an interrelated problem.
“By speaking with Ukrainian doctors, health care workers, and executives on the ground, I learned that their hospitals are experiencing a capacity crunch due to wounded and impacted civilians, as well as many refugees fleeing the war, and therefore, more than ever, they cannot afford to lose a single staff member to COVID-19 infections,” said Gutman in a statement on Intrivo and On/Go for Good’s donation.
For Gutman, the need for diagnostic tests was expected.
But he also described a need that he hadn’t foreseen prior to speaking with Ukrainian healthcare workers firsthand: the need for supporting neonatal wards in Ukraine amid a surge in stress-induced births.
“Visiting the neonatal ward in the pediatric hospital in Lviv, seeing the premature babies, and talking with the doctors and nurses who delivered them, was both eye-opening and heartbreaking,” he says. “When they told me that the proliferation of premature births was a result of stress induced by a combination of war and the pandemic and expressed a need to ensure that both their staff and their patients are protected, it hit me how imperative it was to keep all of them as safe and healthy as possible during these unprecedented, stressful times. And even more so, to predict and prevent a new COVID-19 surge in the absence of publicly-available resources to handle it effectively.”
Hospitals that have received aid from On/Go for Good so far include the Lviv Regional Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Western Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center, and Lviv Oncological Regional Medical and Diagnostic Center.
The Role of International Actors
In the Health Policy Watch report, Michel Kazatchkine, special adviser to the World Health Organization Europe, stressed the importance of international cooperation in reconstructing hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Without continued backing, Ukraine’s healthcare system may falter, and healthcare workers may not receive their salaries.
“[Ukraine] is working on reforming its systems and looking toward reconstruction,” he says. “And of course, here the international donors will have a key role in terms of budgetary support, but also in terms of helping Ukraine to reconstruct hospitals and other health care facilities not as they were before, but as facilities responding to the best modern standards of care.”
Gutman and Intrivo’s philanthropy aligns with this call for international support
Donating essential medical supplies and technology contributes to the immediate needs of Ukraine’s health care system and can potentially help Ukrainian facilities build a stronger technological infrastructure to support care in the future.
Kazatchkine also suggested that the international community should prioritize persuading Russia to give international humanitarian organizations access to the occupied territories to assess health needs.
Reflecting on his experience in Ukraine, Gutman echoes the point that access is crucial for understanding the full scope of the crisis and providing targeted assistance, emphasizing the need to “really get to know the people, talk with them, understand their distress.”
“I went there to just meet the people, make sure that [aid] goes to the right places, and we maximized the impact,” he says.
On/Go for Good’s donations can be seen as part of a broader effort to ensure that aid reaches those most in need. Working closely with Ukrainian authorities and health care providers helps to bridge gaps and ensure that assistance is directed where it is most urgently required.
The war in Ukraine has laid bare the fragility of healthcare infrastructure, with invasions and airstrikes causing significant damage and placing civilian lives at risk. The COVID-19 pandemic added another layer of complexity to an already dire situation.
Ron Gutman and On/Go for Good’s support of health care infrastructure and access to mental health care in the country is a testament to the power of empathy and action to address these humanitarian crises. In the face of adversity, compassion and an open-minded approach to helping do the most good for those in need can make a tangible difference.
