Thread by @ChrisO_wiki

1/ Russian front-line hospitals are experiencing acute shortages of personnel and supplies. Only officers are reportedly evacuated to Russia, with ordinary soldiers being treated without anaesthesia or medications. Volunteers are providing most of the medical supplies. ⬇️

2/ The Insider reports on the calamitous state of Russian front-line medical care in the occupied regions of Ukraine. Simply getting to a medical facility is hard enough – many have complained that the wounded are not being evacuated and are often left to die.

3/ Wounded soldiers are supposed to be stabilised and sent to the nearest military field hospital, where they are triaged. They are then meant to be sent to regional hospitals in the occupied territories or in Russia, depending on the severity of their injuries.

4/ In practice, only officers are reportedly sent back to Russia; soldiers and NCOs are being treated within Ukraine. Particularly since the Ukrainian counter-offensive began, medical facilities there are so overwhelmed that schools and kindergartens are being used as hospitals.

5/ Even within Russia, hospitals are overwhelmed by injured men. Russia's decript health care system is a further obstacle: there are no computers, everything is done by hand and it reportedly takes 45-60 minutes to deal with each man. There is no digitisation of records.

6/ Only a quarter of those queuing are actually being seen due to the very slow rate with which they are being processed. "The guys line up before opening. As a result, after sitting all day, they cannot get an appointment."

7/ Volunteers crowdsource medical supplies on social media. "Calls for help, photos of severed or almost severed limbs of soldiers in fundraising chats alternate with jingoistic videos, pro-Russian videos from TikTok, congratulations on Russia Day and other public holidays."

8/ The civilian hospital in Valuyki in the Belgorod region is a main treatment centre for Russian wounded, but lacks everything from wipes to prescription drugs.

9/ Doctors say they lack disinfectants such as chlorhexidine and hydrogen peroxide, solutions for IVs, tubes for decompression of the gastrointestinal tract, drainage systems for the chest, gauze bandages, bandages, and painkillers. Anaesthetics are in short supply as well.

10/ The doctors also have no tools. They ask volunteers to buy surgical scissors, clamps, staplers and staples for suturing wounds and internal organs, hemostatic sponges to stop bleeding, and tablets to determine the patients' blood group.

11/ The medics face particularly acute problems in dealing with amputations, which have become among the most common procedures they are having to perform due to the number of injuries caused by shelling and mine explosions.

12/ The number of amputations is also much greater than it should be. Soldiers are poorly trained in emergency aid and lack high-quality tourniquets in their first aid kits. Tourniquets are often improperly applied, leaving no option but to amputate the injured limb.

13/ This problem has been acknowledged before by the Russian authorities. The head of the Kalashnikov Centre for Tactical Medicine, Artyom Katulin, has said that more than 30% of amputations were due to improper tourniquet application. Russian paramedics are often poorly trained.

14/ Russian paramedics are often poorly trained, while medical training for ordinary soldiers is minimal. They are given only small, old-fashioned and often decades-old medical kits which are vastly different from Ukrainian equivalents.

https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1658813918649647110

15/ According to Dmitry Trishkin, head of the Russian Ministry of Defence's military medical department, by December last year approximately a quarter of the soldiers admitted to hospitals were in a serious or extremely serious condition. Half were moderately injured.

16/ However, this was before the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and the bloodiest stage of the Battle of Bakhmut, which have both caused a huge increase in Russian casualties. Figures are kept secret but are certain to be high – in the tens of thousands.

17/ The hospitals themselves are often in a poor condition due to a lack of investment. Some Russian hospitals are still using beds shipped to them by the British in 1945. They lack air conditioning and are stiflingly hot in summer, adding to the patients' discomfort.

18/ Russia's hospitals are frequently in a poor condition, with mouldy, crumbling walls, filthy bedding and unsafe buildings. As of 2019, over 41% had no central heating and over 30% had no water. Half of Russia’s hospitals closed between 2000 and 2015 for lack of funding.

19/ Although volunteers have kept military hospitals going, donor fatigue appears to have set in. One Moscow region volunteer says: "People are tired of the Special Military Operation, every month fewer people send us money. The amounts that people transfer have also decreased."

20/ The pro-Ukrainian incursion at Shebekino in May 2023 also diverted funds away from hospitals. A widespread volunteer effort helped the local inhabitants, many of whom lost their homes in the fighting. However, hospitals have lost out and their conditions have deteriorated.

21/ It's worth contrasting the dismal state of Russian military medicine to how the Ukrainians have tackled the challenge of treating the wounded. Ukraine's extensive pre-war planning gave it one of the highest number of hospital beds per capita of any country in the world.

22/ Ukrainian hospitals were told to increase bed numbers by thirty percent and keep them empty. There are now more than 8 beds in Ukraine for every million people, compared to 2.4 in Britain and an average of 5 across the European Union. Paramedics receive extensive training.

23/ Although tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded in the fighting, far fewer of them will have died or suffered crippling injuries due to the higher standard of medical care. The Russians' bad medical outcomes have been self-inflicted and unnecessary. /end

Sources:
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🔹 https://t.co/7PXnANLwZ6
🔹 https://t.co/v7tgRqKyyu
🔹 https://t.co/UkAzh3FVtatheins.ru/obshestvo/2628…
themoscowtimes.com/2020/02/27/zar…
telegraph.co.uk/global-health/…
telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…