B.C. doctor returns from volunteer mission in Ukraine

A doctor from B.C. is recounting her experiences after volunteering and helping provide primary health care in Ukraine.

Dr. Tara Stratton is back in the Okanagan, working at Kelowna General Hospital after what she said were two intense weeks in the war-torn nation.

An emergency room physician, Stratton said the makeshift clinics she found herself working in were often the area’s only source of medical care since Russia’s invasion.

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“The work we’re doing is mostly primary care. We’d run mobile clinics in some of the smaller villages, and these are all villages that would have been previously occupied by Russia at earlier points in the war,” said Stratton, who volunteered with an organization called Global Care Force.

A team of health-care workers would bring in a couple months’ of medical supplies and see between 20 and 100 patients a day — in areas where medical care might have been limited but is now virtually non-existent.

“We’d go to these smaller villages, where you’d really start to see the breadth of destruction — all the buildings that have been blown up or shot up,” said Stratton.

“And all the fields that have signs that say ‘mines are here.’ Everywhere you go, you can’t wander off the path, that’s clear.

The health-care team would deal with everything from general check-ups to disease management, acute problems and trauma care.

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But in listening to her patients, Stratton said a trend emerged.

“They’re grateful for the care, but they’re also grateful that the world is still paying attention (to the war) and they haven’t been forgotten and the experiences that they’ve gone through are going to be heard,” said Stratton, adding she was grateful for the opportunity.

While in Ukraine, Stratton said the team heard individual stories about the atrocities of war, which reinforced her decision why she chose to help Ukraine in the first place.

“It’s when you sit there and you listen and you hear what happened that it becomes so much more important,” said Stratton, “and to really remember that these are people behind the numbers.”

That’s also why she hopes to return one day.

“If I have the ability to do that, and I have the means to take some time and get there and provide that care to people who really, really need it, then I want to be the person who does that.”

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