�������ýҕ�l

The war in Ukraine is becoming a crisis of reproductive health. Over the next three months, more than 80,000 Ukrainian people are expected to give birth, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). That’s about 1,000 deliveries per week. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 15 percent of pregnancies—in a war zone or not—will require skilled medical care for a potentially life-threatening complication. Women have already given birth in underground shelters and in subway stations. UNFPA posted a woman’s firsthand account of delivering a baby in Kyiv on the first day of the conflict. “I was lucky,” she wrote, “it did not happen in the basement.” (Levy, 3/16)

Down a dusty stairwell, hidden from the shelling that has become the grim background noise of Ukraine’s capital, Ludmila Yashenko fusses with the babies. There are 19 of them, sleeping or cooing in neatly arranged cribs, fed regularly from tubs of baby formula. The kitchen has a sterilizer for bottles, while the nursery has a changing station stocked with diapers. Ms. Yashenko and other nannies bounce the babies on their laps and straighten their bibs, even as they watch television, wide-eyed, to learn the latest news from the war. Death and destruction are rampant in Ukraine, but in this basement there is new life, if also new problems. (Kramer and Varenikova, 3/12)

The immediate toll of the Russian airstrike that devastated a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol last week was three people dead and 17 injured, but the impact did not stop there. In the AP photo that has come to symbolize the attack, a wounded pregnant woman lies on a stretcher, holding her lower belly and splattered with blood, being rushed out of the hospital by emergency workers seeking care for her elsewhere. Neither she nor her baby survived. (Cole, 3/16)

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (U.N.) are warning that medical facilities in Ukraine have been stretched to a breaking point. The WHO's regional office for Europe said it is working "day and night" to keep medical supply chains open and preserve Ukraine’s health system. According to the U.N., Russian missile attacks on health care facilities, workers and patients had killed 12 people and injured 34 as of Tuesday. More attacks are being verified. (Musto, 3/16)

A doctor from Boston appealed directly to leading Russian scientists Wednesday, warning that a nuclear war triggered by the “massive bloodshed” in Ukraine could bring the “end of human civilization.” Addressing the prestigious Russian Academy of Science, Dr. James Muller, a cardiologist and Nobel laureate, cautioned that the ongoing destruction in Ukraine could escalate and is preventing collaboration between Americans and Russians on a range of medical and scientific issues. “There is no possibility of raising money in the US for cooperation with Russian physicians until the violence has ceased,” he said. His impassioned remarks prompted some top Russian scientists — who’d spoken earlier about being ostracized by international colleagues behind a “new Iron Curtain” — to say they’d consider joining US counterparts in a public call to oppose nuclear conflict and resume collaboration. (Weisman, 3/16)

The World Health Organization said Wednesday its evaluation of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine has been postponed for the time being, due to the “uneven situation.” WHO vaccines expert Dr. Mariangela Simao said at a press briefing that the U.N. health agency’s officials had originally been scheduled to visit Russia on March 7 to assess the facilities where Sputnik V is produced — just weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. (3/16)