Kelowna doctor shares stories from volunteering in Ukraine

In the face of adversity or injustice, Dr. Tara Stratton, an emergency room physician in Kelowna, is not someone who sits idly by.

Stratton has recently returned from a trip to Ukraine, where she volunteered and provided medical care to people near the front lines of the war with an organization called Global Care Force.

Between hikes with her rescue dog Zeus and shifts in emergency departments around the province, Stratton spoke with Capital News about her time in Ukraine.

Resilience and strength

She said that one thing that has stuck with her is how in the face of adversity and amidst destruction, life in Ukraine carries on with dignity.

Her journey in Ukraine started in Kyiv. Stratton describes it as a normal, beautiful and bustling European city–if you overlook the war memorials, nighttime curfews, damaged buildings and sporadic air raid sirens.

“The war is always on people’s minds, but life goes on.”

While in Ukraine, the team of physicians, nurse practitioners and healthcare professionals with Global Care Force worked in seven towns in southeastern Ukraine that had been occupied by Russian troops earlier in the war.

Threats just under the surface

At first, the air raid sirens that punctuated her days working in the towns approximately 50 km from the front line of the war were unnerving. However, Stratton said that she followed the lead of locals and remained calm– or found shelter if required–and then continued on, as though missiles were a regular part of life.

Simple things, like a her regular morning runs were absolutely out of the question. Land mines now litter the Ukrainian countryside and pose a constant threat. Shortly before the group arrived at one of the towns, two children devastatingly detonated a land mine while playing.

Stripped down to the toilet seats

Nearly half of the population of the towns fled when violence escalated and Russian troops invaded. As a result, many of the communities no longer have local physicians or healthcare professionals.

Now that immediate threats have subsided, volunteers from the Global Care Force visit the towns on a regular basis to bring not only doctors but also supplies and medications.

Without the volunteers, many people would not have access to any medical care or medicine, said Stratton.

Many of the clinic buildings and rural hospitals in the towns are unstable and barren after being looted and bombed and were not safe to enter. Stratton explained that when Russian troops retreated they took or broke everything that they could including pharmaceuticals and furniture from homes, all the way down to the toilet seats.

Accessing some of the more remote towns was a difficult task in itself, said Stratton. War has chewed up the roads, making them impassible for some vehicles. She said that as a result, accessing vital medications has become incredibly challenging and expensive.

Global Care Force brings medications and some basic equipment to the towns and often what is brought is all that is available.

Medicine is still medicine

Practising medicine in a resource-limited environment while navigating power outages means that healthcare workers in the towns often cannot order standard tests such as blood work or imaging. Common medications that require refrigeration are not available or feasible to use in the small towns where black outs are common.

Translators helped the team communicate with patients and despite the language barrier and a limited stock of medications, Stratton said that “medicine is still medicine,” and used what was available to treat people to the best of her ability.

She explained that most of what she did was treat people in need of medical follow-up for chronic diseases, like diabetes, heart and thyroid conditions. She did treat some off-duty troops with old injuries or for non-war concerns like pneumonia and COVID complications. Her job was to provide basic healthcare to as many people as possible.

Trauma was visible in the children

She said that the most difficult part of her job was treating the young children brought in by concerned parents.

“You could see the most impact in the children.”

The biggest challenge that she and her team faced was supporting the children, despite a language barrier, and making them comfortable enough to conduct an examination.

Many children are facing psychological, rather than physical impacts of the war and are experiencing night terrors and anxiety.

There was a mental health expert on the team who worked to help parents and their children find coping strategies and access resources to help them work through the trauma that they have experienced over the past year.

Stratton said that she hopes to return to volunteer in Ukraine again in the next year and has future plans to help in other countries that are in need of medical support.

Locally, Stratton spends a few days each month working in rural emergency departments around B.C., in addition to her regular shifts at the Kelowna General Hospital.

Often, rural centres in B.C. are short-staffed and will experience closures without out-of-town doctors picking up the shifts. Stratton loves the adventure and challenges that each new hospital setting brings and is passionate about people’s right to accessible healthcare.