Doctors of the Mariupol ambulance substation rescued people in the conditions of Russian occupation and ban on moving around the city by ambulance
“We decided to leave Mariupol when the occupiers forbade us to move around the city by ambulance,” said Oleksandr Konovalov, a former paramedic at the Mariupol ambulance substation and student at the Donetsk National Medical University.
Before Oleksandr and his colleagues managed to leave the city in mid-March 2022, they lived 24/7 at the substation and provided assistance to the victims.
“The most difficult thing was to work in the absence of communication. Until March 2, 2022, there was still a mobile connection, and then the signal could be ‘caught’ only in some locations, but it was not. Because of this, people came to us themselves, brought the wounded, or told us where to go. The hardest part was not having contact with hospitals. In addition, the city is big — when you had to get to other areas, it was easy to come under fire,” the paramedic said.
Now Oleksandr works at the ambulance in Odesa, some of his colleagues settled in Zaporizhzhia, and some found a job in the western regions of Ukraine.
