In Mykolaiv oblast, medical care becomes closer to people

The corridors are quiet, but invisible work is in full swing. We pull on gowns, masks and shoe covers, and head to the laboratory, where the equipment hums softly. 

"This little worker of ours is sleeping now," Natalia Hryhorivna, head of the laboratory, jokes, tapping the panel of the new hematology analyzer. The hospital received it through a joint project by UNOPS and the Danish healthcare company Novo Nordisk. Once switched on, the analyzer slips back into the lab's daily rhythm: complete blood count, leukocyte formula, ESR, hematocrit - the tests ordered for dozens of patients every day.

"Before, we did everything on one analyzer, and we had queues," Natalia Hryhorivna explains. "Now that we have a second one, we can split the flow: one for inpatients, one for outpatients." For the lab’s three technicians, this means simpler planning and faster service. On busy days, during medical checkups for example, they process up to fifty tests.

Domanivka hospital serves three communities in the Mykolaiv region: Domanivska, Prybuzka, and Mostivska. Together, this is about 23,000 people, plus more than 4,000 internally displaced persons who settled here after 2022. There is no rail connection here, and when bus routes drop off, for example in spring when high water cuts off roads, "going to Mykolaiv for tests" sounds like a luxury. The local hospital is not a "last resort" option, but the only realistic option.

"People don’t need to go anywhere else. A family doctor sends an electronic referral, we do the tests and enter the results into the system," Natalia Hryhorivna says. In the way she says "we," I hear both professional pride and the tired resilience of a team working with little room to spare.

The hospital grounds are easy to get lost in: buildings and utility blocks are spread across five hectares. Deputy directors proudly show us pellet-fired boiler rooms, solar panels, generators – all the pieces that help keep the hospital running through frequent power outages. 

On the way to the surgical department, we pass by a detached building with an older stationary X-ray unit. It sits about a hundred metres away from the surgical wing, across uneven paths.

Inside the surgical department, there is something new: a mobile X-ray unit, also delivered by UNOPS with financial support from Novo Nordisk.
 

The senior nurse, Larysa Vasylivna, puts it simply: “It has made our work easier. Now we can do X-rays right in the operating room. We don’t have to move the patient anywhere.” Before, patients had to be transferred between this and the building with the stationary X-ray machine on stretchers or gurneys. Heavier patients – “150 kilos and more,” she recalls – sometimes required six people to carry them. Who carried them? Nurses. Doctors. Whoever was available.

Surgeon Yevhen Mykhailovych adds: “This mobile unit means we don’t have to disturb the patient during imaging. For people with fractures, that’s a huge relief.” Anyone who has experienced such pain will understand the difference this makes. For the surgical team, having mobile imaging in the operating theatre is immediately transformative: an image taken during the procedure shows what the eye cannot – deep structures, the alignment of bones, the accuracy of fixation, and allows the team to adjust on the spot.

Here, the war is discussed without grand words, simply as extra pressure on a system that was already fragile. With displacement, there are more patients. Not everyone has the paperwork to register with a family doctor. But how do you turn away someone who needs help now?

“I haven’t refused a single person in my entire practice,” Yevhen Mykhailovych says.

That, perhaps, is the core of the Domanivka hospital story: despite ageing buildings, difficult roads and a shortage of staff, there are practical solutions that bring care closer to people. When the lab equipment runs reliably, and a surgeon wheels a mobile X-ray unit into place before an operation, it is a quiet, everyday win against circumstances, and for patients who often have nowhere else to turn.

About the project:

This joint project, implemented by UNOPS with financial support from the Government of Denmark and Novo Nordisk, aims to strengthen healthcare facilities in the Mykolaiv region and help them expand the range of medical services. The project consists of two components: with financial support from the Government of Denmark, UNOPS is carrying out repair work in five hospitals in Mykolaiv, and with funding from Novo Nordisk, UNOPS is procuring and delivering priority medical equipment to more than 15 healthcare facilities around the region.