International cooperation is also about developing inter-institutional partnerships that help increase the effectiveness and scale of humanitarian assistance. Thanks to the efforts of the Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya’s partners at Comité d’aide médicale Ukraine, the French humanitarian organization TULIPE (Transfert d'Urgence de L'Industrie PharmaceutiquE) provided 62.85 tons of medicines and medical consumables to support healthcare facilities in Ukraine.

These are five large shipments of medications and emergency, pediatric, and surgical kits that have arrived in Ukraine since early July. The first shipment was sent directly to the Kharkiv region, where 17.5 tons of medicines were distributed among two dozen medical institutions. Another more than 12 tons of medicines were dispatched from Uzhhorod by volunteers at the CAMZ humanitarian warehouse to hospitals in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Kyiv, and Kirovohrad oblasts. Requests from the Odesa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions are currently being processed.

Thanks to the targeted aid received, healthcare facilities, particularly those in frontline regions, are able to build up reserves of essential medicines, ensuring that they have the resources needed to save lives and protect people’s health in critical situations. At the same time, it is important to note that small medical facilities (feldsher-midwife stations, health points, etc.) are often among the only places where people living near the frontline can access medicines, as pharmacies and retail chains in these areas are frequently no longer operating. Therefore, supporting such facilities is of great social importance and remains a priority for our organization. 

In general, Ukrainian doctors and medical staff continue to work under extraordinary strain during the war, as cities, villages, and towns take in thousands of internally displaced persons who require timely medical care, often to the same extent as, or even more than, local residents. Hospitals relocated from temporarily occupied areas do not resume operations immediately, and a significant number are unable to fully restore their capacity. These wartime realities make assistance to the healthcare sector critically important, and every humanitarian shipment of medicines or medical supplies represents an opportunity to ensure the continuity of medical services even under adverse security conditions. 

The Medical Aid Committee in Zakarpattya would like to thank our French partners for their understanding of the current situation in Ukraine and for their prompt response to the needs of the country’s social infrastructure. Over the 4.5 years since the beginning of russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, we have demonstrated the effectiveness of our cooperation by providing assistance to thousands of people affected by russian aggression.