On the morning of February 24, 2022, Russian forces launched a multi-pronged invasion by land, air, and sea into Ukraine.
Three years after the invasion, 12.7 million people need humanitarian assistance. In Ukraine, 3.6 million people are displaced internally and nearly 7 million refugees from Ukraine have been recorded across Europe.
Three years of war has caused widespread destruction, reducing some cities to rubble, damaging or destroying hundreds of thousands of homes along with critical infrastructure and leaving millions of people with limited or no access to electricity, water or heat. Many people are living either in collective centers or damaged buildings, without basic needs for daily life and vulnerable to a range of health threats.
Since the start of war, Americares has been working closely with local organizations to meet health needs. Many stories have emerged. Scroll down and meet some of the extraordinary people and organizations who have shared their stories.
Updated 02/18/2025
According to the World Health Organization, hundreds of attacks on health care facilities have been reported since the start of the war, resulting in many deaths and creating even more barriers to health care access in Ukraine. For families with children fighting cancer, access to the right medicine makes all the difference. Watch the video and meet one family. Just click on the arrow.
People living in Ukraine face barriers to care: attacks on health facilities, a shrinking health workforce (due to safety concerns and displacement), rising healthcare costs, declining or disappearing incomes and mass displacement. Children and adults are going without vital vaccines, and people with chronic conditions – such as diabetes or dementia – have suffered dangerous interruptions in care.
In the two years since the start of the war, we have provided total aid valued at more than $147 million to 83 local organizations assisting those affected by the war. The aid includes grants and shipments of medicine and medical supplies, including those delivered by volunteer Medical Outreach teams.
To date, Americares has awarded 141 emergency grants valued at more than $6.6 million to 62 organizations. The support helps local organizations meet a wide range of critical health needs from tourniquets and tactical trauma care for civilians in Ukraine to the delivery of essential oncological medicines to a children’s medical center.
Americares partner network in Ukraine includes lean, community-rooted organizations that reach vulnerable populations who lack access to health facilities as well as large, highly specialized partners fully integrated into the national health system. This robust partner network allows Americares to meet needs across the health spectrum.
“The support from Tabletochki and Americares is a matter of life and death for our patients. The support has provided us with the possibility to treat the child with previously incurable disease here; they don’t have to travel elsewhere. They have a chance to survive.”
Dr. Roman Kizyma, head of clinic of pediatric oncology at a specialized children’s hospital in Lviv, Ukraine
Dr. Kizyma’s hospital receives cancer medicine donated by Americares through Tabletochki, an Americares partner in Ukraine.
Three years into the full-scale invasion, Americares focuses its support on local organizations in Ukraine, providing them with medicine, medical and relief supplies, technical support and training, while mainstreaming protection work to reach populations most in need of humanitarian aid, including women, children and older people.
We are now focusing our response in three main areas:
These response areas overlap: When possible, Americares links mental health and psychosocial support with medicine security interventions. For example, Americares has acquired medicines and medical supplies for psychological boarding houses in central Ukraine, offered grant support to acquire generators for mental health facilities as part of the winterization strategy and provided grant funds for the purchase of specialty medicines for a psychiatric care health facility.
Take a look below by clicking on the plus sign to see what we are doing in the three main areas of our response and what we have done in safeguarding and protection of the most vulnerable.
Access to Medicines & Care
Americares emergency response team is coordinating shipments of medicine and supplies into Ukraine to support local organizations assisting those affected by war. Since the start of the invasion, Americares has shipped more than 544 tons of medicine and relief supplies – valued at more than $115 million – to health facilities and first responders in Ukraine, with more shipments planned.
There is a critical need for medicine and medical supplies, including specialty medicines and medical supplies to care for cancer patients, newborns and others with complex medical needs. Americares is prepared to meet those needs — and more.
In medicine, a quick diagnosis can save a life.
Ultrasound imaging is a critical diagnostic tool for doctors and first responders, especially in Ukraine, where deadly bombs cause injuries far too often. In one instance, through the Institute of Emergency Medicine in Poland, Americares provided handheld Butterfly iQ ultrasound probes to 15 hospitals in Ukraine, including the regional hospital where pediatric anesthesiologist Aleksji Obolonskij works, saving the lives of young trauma patients.
Click the link and read the story of how the life of a 4-year-old boy was saved.
In war, many people, including children, learn skills to save lives.
In late 2022, Americares provided the Poland-based Institute of Emergency Medicine with more than 10,000 tourniquets, used to stop the flow of blood to a limb or extremity in an emergency. Because the tourniquets were intended for civilians, Americares also provided two-day courses in emergency medicine, taught by certified trainers. The goal was to train 100 instructors who could, in turn, train and supply 10,000 civilians with tourniquets. By the end of December, IEM had trained more than 140 instructors in Lviv, Odesa and Uzghorod. Two of those are Natalia and her 13-year-old daughter, Olena*.
Click this link; read the full story of Mother and Daughter learning life-saving skills.
While major shipments supplied health facilities and programs, the Americares Medical Outreach program has supported 32 trips by volunteer medical teams to Poland, Romania and Ukraine with more than $4.7 million worth of donated medicines and medical products.
On two of those trips, Dr. Eric Morgan and a team from Sojourners United brought Americares medicine and medical supplies to a remote village in eastern Ukraine that had been heavily bombed.
During his last trip, Dr. Morgan wrote:
Typically, more than 90 percent of residents leave these villages, which often have no power, no cell phones and no operating stores. The elderly and chronically ill are often the only people remaining in these villages. During our first visit in July, we were struck by how these villagers in great need would often turn down our offers of medicine for diabetes, high blood pressure and non-narcotic pain medicines, knowing that we were going to other villages that day where there would be more people in great need.
Now, on our return trip months later, we noticed people didn’t decline our donations and were grateful when we extended an extra month’s worth of medicines to them. “I remember you!” The door to our van had just opened after we arrived in the village when we heard a woman’s voice. People were starting to gather in the road for the medical clinic and food distribution. “I never forget a face,” she said, smiling. “You were here before!” We had been here, just nine months before. This village was located one mile from the front line. When we approached in July, we saw five plumes of smoke in the air, followed by a stream of people in cars, bikes and on foot. The site of our distribution and clinic had been attacked by Russian rockets five minutes before our arrival. No one was injured, and we relocated to an alternate location to give out needed meds and food items.
Now, months later, as we returned, there were no rockets to disrupt our efforts, but evidence of strikes remained: broken windows in almost every home, many roofs and parts of houses destroyed. There were constant sounds of artillery fire: Imagine yourself in an intense, never-ending thunderstorm with many lightning strikes one or two miles away, but occasionally so close that you jump. And, while there were occasional strikes nearby, there were no whistles indicating an inbound rocket very close. Before February 2022, these villages had their own pharmacies and clinics, which closed after the bombs began to fall in. As a result, for this particular village, the closest pharmacy was now over an hour away – if you had the fortune to have access to a car that could drive that distance. Almost everyone we met did not. It was a blessing to have received generous donations from an organization like Americares so that we could bring medicines that were so needed for people in great need. And they were grateful for these small acts to help them.
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“I met a lady in Chernihiv, Ukraine who told me that her mother ran out of her glaucoma medication as the supplies in the pharmacies were gone. She was so concerned that she would completely lose her vision that she could not sleep at night. Once we were able to give her the glaucoma medication, she became calm and was able to perform her daily activities. The daughter said that her mother was like a new person!!!”
Esli Gollapalli, DO
The war has affected everyone in Ukraine, but it is particularly cruel to pregnant women. The health effects on pregnant women are stark. Since the beginning of the war, a regional hospital in western Ukraine has seen a significant increase in premature births, from 3.56 percent of all births before the war to 13 percent in the first months after the war began in February. Read a story about Americares efforts to meet this challenge.
War and displacement are difficult for healthy people but can be doubly challenging for those who suffer from chronic illness such as diabetes. Since the start of the war, treatments for low blood sugar have been in short supply in Ukraine, and critical medicines for diabetes have been nearly impossible to find. Read how we are helping hospitals address this health crisis.
Trauma and Loss
Americares supports social service and mental health organizations in Ukraine and Poland so they have the infrastructure, technical and professional skills to ensure they can meet immediate and long-term needs. To support the mental health of people affected by the war, Americares has provided program support to 24 partner organizations in Poland, Romania and Ukraine. Of the 141 total grants, 41 grants totaling more than $1.4M support mental health.
These include:
The Americares team continues to develop educational resources in Ukrainian and has delivered capacity-building training for health care and frontline workers on psychological first aid and other topics relevant to mental health. Americares also provides psychosocial support activities to partner staff, including sessions on preventing burnout, coping with stress, building resiliency and strengthening community-based support.
With Americares assistance, our partners have also trained frontline clinicians in therapy techniques that address the unique trauma of war for both children and adults.
Yaryna fled to safety and quickly turned to helping others.
When 20-year-old Yaryna fled Ukraine in February 2022, driving her sister and family friends to Poland over three days in frigid temperatures, she had one goal: To bring everyone safely across the border. She did not know that her intense focus on that goal would be the first step to a debilitating burnout that threatened her own health and safety.
Click on this link; read Yaryna’s story of finding support among other refugees.
Americares has experience providing mental health and psychosocial support to refugees and others affected by war and instability. We know from our work in Jordan with Syrian refugees and in Colombia with Venezuelan migrants that mental health support is so critical for this population, whose lives have changed drastically. We know that mental health is fundamental to response and recovery.
This is a newly renovated area in the basement of the Odesa Regional Center of Socially Significant Disease. This area was created to secure and separate TB patients to prevent the spreading of the disease during an air raid alarm. Thanks to Americares grant, LifePlus, the hospital was able to renovate a portion of the basement for this purpose. Click here and read the whole story.
How to Bomb-proof Medicine – When the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv came under attack in 2022, health professionals knew they had to save lives – and medicine. They found and tranformed an unlikely place. Read the story.
videos, images, narratives
“Now, I know I can come here and get medical treatment whenever we need it. For a refugee and a mother with two girls with Down Syndrome, it’s crucial,”…Oksana Z, a Ukrainian refugee – read their story of finding peace, serenity, and many helpful people.
“In February, the bombs replaced our breakfast. It should have been a normal day for my family. But for breakfast, I didn’t have coffee with milk. In my mind it stayed the 24th of February for a long period. That doesn’t mean that we can’t comprehend this, but we need time to adapt and understand what to do next. And these simple things [support from the Coalition for Youth] give us time to understand how we can move forward.”
— Marta, a university professor and administrator
“The babies were born in February. We were discharged from the hospital on March 15, and three or four days later, a building in my apartment block was shelled, so my husband took us to the railroad station. From Lviv, we came here, and a volunteer brought us everything we needed. Now I can say that people shouldn’t be scared or worried [to leave Ukraine]. There are organizations that can help you survive and settle in. We’re grateful that we can hide somewhere from the war.”
Natalia
“People have different reactions to stress—some shut down, some isolate themselves. It’s important to decrease the effects of PTSD and stop people from sinking deeper into their traumas.”
Yulia, a psychotherapist
…Alina and Timofy
Alina rests with her son, Timofy*, in a hotel in Krakow, Poland where she and her family are receiving displaced person’s assistance.
*name changed
Alina left Ukraine, where she had just finished studying dermatology, to seek refuge in Poland. Her husband, who is also a doctor, was not allowed to leave the country. A friend of hers made a similar journey weeks prior and disappeared, and, while she is unsure of what has happened to her friend, she suspects that she has been trafficked. In order to avoid a similar fate, she called on her mother-in-law and father-in-law, Olena and Oleg, to come meet her in Poland. The family awaits the processing of the necessary paperwork so that they can travel to Israel together.
Alina and her baby son Timofy are safe and sound in Krakow, currently staying in a hotel room provided to them by the Jewish Community Center of Krakow.
Americares awarded JCC Krakow a grant to support programs providing assistance to Ukrainian refugees, including temporary accommodation, a safe space for mothers and children, and other programs, on April 5, 2022.
The unique value of Americares in the global humanitarian response to the war is, first and foremost, the close partnerships we have developed inside Ukraine with health facilities and other organizations that help the communities most at risk. We have also developed effective supply chains to deliver donated and procured product quickly into Ukraine. Americares partners span several regions, working near the contact line in the south and east of Ukraine, as well as in the west where many displaced Ukrainians have taken refuge.
Most importantly, Americares brings an approach that is rooted in listening: We ask local hospitals, clinics, nongovernmental and governmental organizations to tell us what they need and then we work to meet that need.
Americares also brings 45 years of emergency response and humanitarian aid to our work. All of our emergency responses are multifaceted, not only providing medicine and supplies, but also working closely with partners to co-design, implement, and scale their outreach and services to the people affected.
…and offering comfort to the most vulnerable…
Americares has a long history of supporting clinical services for refugees and migrants. Since 1986, Americares has provided more than $2 billion in aid to Eastern Europe, including more than $273 million in aid to Ukraine, which began in 1992. We also donate medicines and medical supplies to U.S.-based medical professionals traveling to Ukraine to provide care for patients in need.
Americares has professional relief workers ready to respond to disasters at a moment’s notice and stocks emergency medicine and supplies in warehouses in the U.S., Europe and India that can be delivered quickly in times of crisis.
Americares has 45 years of experience responding to emergencies, including conflicts that lead to large-scale displacements. We respond to more than 35 natural disasters and humanitarian crises worldwide each year, establish long-term recovery projects and bring disaster preparedness programs to communities vulnerable to disasters.
We can do this work, because you care about what happens to Rita, Yulia, David and Raisa and all of the people caught in the war. Together we can help each of them and the many local organizations serving their health needs. Click on the “Please give now” button below.
