Fausta Micheletta, after the mission at the border between Moldova and Ukraine, tells: “Women, after so much stress and anxiety, come to us and cave in”
photo ©Alessio Romenzi for INTERSOS
Fausta Micheletta is an internist and risk manager working in Rome. She has worked over the years in various war and humanitarian crises contexts. At the beginning of March, during the first phase of the emergency caused by the war in Ukraine, she joined our team in Moldova to provide relief and medical assistance to people fleeing the country. “The health needs are many, physical but also psychological”, she tells on her return to Italy. “Women, after all the stress and anxiety, come to us and cave in”.
Which are the specific health care needs in people arriving at the border?
The health care needs are many. On the one hand, there are people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease, who arrive at the border with early signs of decompensation as they have not been able to take their medication regularly, mainly for two reasons: because they are difficult to find; and/or because people have not brought the medication with them during the evacuation. On the other hand, especially children and the elderly, are affected by colds and bronchitis, due to the temperatures of recent days. In these days, I have also assisted people with stress and anxiety-related problems. In particular, we have assisted women who have fled with their children without sleeping for several days, living in silence the anxiety and the fear to avoid frightening their children. Once arrived at the border, safe, away from the eyes of their children, in our mobile clinic they can finally let themselves go. We try to identify the problem and we attempt to make them start, when necessary, a therapy or let them continue the interrupted therapies trying to give enough medicines to bring with them for the rest of the journey.
What has impressed you about this situation?
I was particularly touched by seeing all these mothers arriving, women of my age, taking care of children and grandparents. They are alone, with the responsibility of bringing their family to safety and the distress of having left their partner in Ukraine. I started looking at them when I arrived. Then I identified with them. I thought about my 8-year-old daughter and what it would be like if I suddenly had to flee with her and the grandparents, the hope that I would find safety and hospitality on the other side of the border. Another thing that impressed me was the great willingness and commitment of the local volunteers, the church, and the firemen: what I felt was a spontaneous spirit of working together, with great cooperation, to respond to needs without any form of mistrust or closure.
What are the differences with other crises you experienced in humanitarian contexts?
I had experiences in completely different contexts, and this changes the perspective from which you look at war. I worked in Sri Lanka after a very long war, in a context where there was nothing left in terms of health, not even doctors, and everything needed to be restored, while working on the daily health needs of the population. The emergency was to provide access to healthcare again. I could see what was left after a war. Other experiences I had were in war-torn countries, Syria and Côte d’Ivoire: contexts where the work focused mainly on war surgery. Helping those injured and other patients in general in such contexts makes you spend 24 hours per day thinking only about what you’re doing at that moment, without ever looking up, without ever taking a breath, with no room to think. Here on the border with Ukraine, you are outside the war, and the perspective is different, you see people who managed to get out of their country and have several health needs and the urgency to be hosted. Here we welcome them, we give them a health response, we can listen, talk and reflect more calmly. Here I basically feel as the bridge between where they are and where they are going to. It’s a new experience that I’ve never had before.