Daria fled Ukraine so she wouldn’t run out of insulin. From Lisbon, Olena tries to save her country’s diabetics
Reports of insulin shortages come from several Ukrainian cities. Without it, thousands of diabetics cannot live. Doses are reduced, in the hope that it will be possible to hold on a little longer without an essential good. Daria Oryshchuk couldn’t wait for more daughters and fled to Portugal with her in her arms. But there are those who stay. And for those, Olena Palievska hopes that her help, however small, will make a difference.
“On the 23rd of February, I was going to work with my husband and I told him that I was panicking because of the war, that nothing was going to happen. Until the last I did not believe it”. Daria Oryshchuk, 24, did not think about the war even in Zhytomyr, about 150 kilometers from Kiev. And she only had insulin for a week.
The war had already started, but Daria would really need insulin and so she would still make an appointment and even use a platform to order it. These choices have been made. In Lisbon, Sister Oleksandra despaired: “I told her that she had to get out of there. We didn’t know how, we didn’t have the money, but she had to get out of there”.
Daria was already on a train with her two-year-old daughter Kira to Lviv, from where they would try to go to when Oleksandra discovered some Portuguese who could take Daria insulin and bring her sister and niece to Portugal. “It was a long road and I was low on insulin. I put up with the high sugar levels. I just wanted to drink [água]. On the train I went on, there were no bathrooms.”
He doesn’t speak Portuguese, but thanks a word: “Obrigada”. “I’m grateful to the people who don’t help me, with a child in their arms alone”, she says, with everyone’s help. She and her daughter are now safe in Lisbon. Kira’s blue eyes have already seen war without knowing what it means.
Daria has had consultations with the Associação Protetora dos Diabéticos de Portugal (APDP). Blood sugar levels stabilized. “I was given a sensor that allows me to control sugar at any time, day or night. And so I know if I need to give insulin or eat something. In Ukraine they didn’t have that,” she tells her after a consultation.
the war in the body
“I believe the war will end quickly. I have a mother, father, brother there. and my husband [a combater] in war. Despite being far away, and more peaceful, the fear remains”, explains Daria. And it is this end to the conflict that also depends on the survival of others, diabetics, like her.
Daria studied psychology, worked in a bank and in an electrical cable factory for an automotive industry. At age 20, she found out that she had type 1 diabetes and that she was going to need insulin to live. 130,000 Ukrainians have this condition. Without access to insulin, it’s another battle the body fights to survive.
Reports of insulin shortages come from several Ukrainian cities. In addition to the distribution chains having been interrupted, it is difficult to preserve this substance in the cold in pharmacies, as electricity tends to go out after the Russian attacks. References and strips to assess blood glucose are also lacking.
“What do you realize is what these people have been doing when they have less insulin? They try their dose of insulinra, they will start insulin. They are poorly compensated, but they try to avoid this situation that leads to quick death. They get higher and higher blood sugar levels, they get these associated symptoms. But they stretch the probability of staying alive a little bit until they get access to insulin”, explains João Filipe Raposo, clinical director of APDP.
There are, albeit in a small number, Ukrainian arrivals. “They arrive with symptoms of diabetes decompensation. He’s sicker because of it. And in the long term – and we don’t have to go too far – they have the risk of complications that we want to avoid in diabetes,” he says.
So every minute makes a difference. Even without a National Health Service (NS) number, APDP provides services to all of them already. While this number of users is not allocated, it is the association that is insuring the costs of the treatments. Hence, João Filipe Raposo admits that fundraising is being considered. Even if the refugee’s integration into the SNS takes place, he explains, it will not have retroactive effects.
Solidarity between diabetics
There is a saying in Ukraine that goes: “If the war comes, show the plans”. But there were no plans to deal with such destruction. And many can’t get out of the country.
Olena Paliievska has lived in Lisbon for several years. She found on social media an appeal to which she was not indifferent: that of a Ukrainian boy who was starting to lack insulin. The story could be hers: Ukrainian, with a 12-year-old daughter, also diabetic. And it was then that an appeal on Facebook to other Portuguese diabetics, so that she could dispense with them, could dispense with the insulin boxes that would act at home.
The result thrilled her. “It was a great joy when today I received a parcel with insulin from Porto in the mail”. Olena managed, at first, to gather almost 40 boxes. Travel, in a suitable thermal bag, by plane to Poland. Afterwards, she will arrive by bus to Lviv, until she reaches her final destination, the Kiev region. There, it will be distributed by doctors and organizations in the field. A journey that is a risk. Beyond the Polish border, it’s the unknown.
But Olena does not demobilize with these receipts. “They need insulin. Without insulin they cannot live. With this war, there are problems with insulin as far as the war hasn’t gone. Many beneficiaries for beneficiaries”. It is there, in Kalush, that this woman has her family. There is no way out: the father is provided for by martial law, the age of the grandmothers no longer leaves the way.
Every morning, Olena turns on her cell phone to confirm that the war is not over. “The first thing I do when I wake up is call my dad to make sure everything is okay. And also when I lie down. We have two hours of time difference. So at eight o’clock, I’m calling to wish you sweet dreams. I hope that in the morning we will be absent again.” And that the dreams of the end of the war come true.