Public Health Catastrophe Looms in Ukraine, Experts Warn

A convoy of five vans snaked slowly on Friday from the battered Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, toward Chernihiv, in the northeast. On board were generators, clothes, fuel — and medications to treat H.I.V.

With a main bridge decimated by shelling, the drivers crept along back roads, hoping to reach Chernihiv on Saturday and begin distributing the drugs to some of the 3,000 residents in desperate need of them.

Organizers of efforts like this one are rushing to prevent the war from morphing into a public health disaster. The conflict, they say, threatens to upend decades of progress against infectious diseases in the region and spark new epidemics that will be difficult to control.

Ukraine has alarmingly high numbers of people living with H.I.V. and hepatitis C, and dangerously low levels of vaccination against measles, polio and Covid-19. Overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions for refugees are breeding grounds for other diseases. Read more

@nytimes