Project Ask the Doctor of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation: How to Reduce the Spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation continues its series of live broadcasts Ask the Doctor. In the framework of the project, some leading healthcare professionals give answers to questions about the coronavirus that worry people the most. The guest of the next episode of the program was Yevgeniya Menzhulina, an infectious diseases doctor, the head of the in-patient department at the medical centre of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

The doctor explained that due to people's careless behaviour amid the pandemic, the number of COVID-19 patients and patients with a severe course of the disease has sharply increased in Ukraine.

‘There is a direct relationship between the level of damage, the amount of the virus that enters the body, and the disease. When a person is in the place of the disease outbreak and at the same time attends nightclubs, restaurants, inhales a million viruses, for such a person the course of the infectious disease will have a severe form,’ said Ms Menzhulina.

She added that the ability to recover and be in a good shape after the coronavirus is directly connected with the patient's wish.

‘When there is a lot of panic, people literally "drive" themselves into a severe condition, although they have high chances to come through the disease more easily. Hysteria runs over the top, and it is more difficult to get a patient cured in this case,’ the doctor explained.

The healthcare specialist named three major factors that raise the likelihood of contracting COVID-19 for the second time: lack of immunity, a large number of social contacts and many patients with coronavirus in a close circle of contacts. The doctor also reminded the audience that in those countries where the incidence rate is currently low, citizens were isolated, socially distanced in the right time and gave up travelling.

‘When people stay at home, those diseased ones remain in the infection nidus, and then they do not spread the virus. In China, entire provinces were closed, water and food were delivered, and people were staying at their homes. Thus, the spread of the disease was prevented.’

Yevgeniya Menzhulina is the twenty-third expert of the project Ask the Doctor. Earlier, the topic of the coronavirus treatment was elucidated in the program by Borys Todurov, a cardiac surgeon, a professor and the director of the Heart Institute, by Yevhen Komarovskyi, a famous paediatrician of the country, Oleksandr Zaika, an immunologist of the Public Health Centre of the Ministry of Health, Oleh Chaban, a psychiatrist, a Doctor of Medical Sciences, and a professor, by Serhiy Dubrov, the President of the Association of Anaesthesiologists of Ukraine, and other experts. The recordings of meetings with them are available for watching on the pages of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation in Facebook and YouTube.

Ask the Doctor initiative is being implemented within the framework of the project Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine and the program Rinat Akhmetov – Saving Lives. Since February 2020, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has been providing doctors who are on the frontlines of the fight against the coronavirus with what is most urgently needed. Public hospitals received more than 200,000 units of personal protective equipment. In addition, doctors received 337,000 rapid COVID-19 tests and 1,044 units of medical and laboratory equipment from the Foundation. Assistance was provided to 505 healthcare facilities in 203 localities. It is a systematic and widest scale private initiative aimed at helping public healthcare facilities in the fight against the coronavirus.