Locations‘My first home’
“This hospital is my first home,” says Olha Romanenko, the head of a hospital in Kharkiv.
When her apartment was damaged by shelling, Olha did not leave the city. Instead, she just went to her "first home,” the hospital. Many of her colleagues did the same, including those who had lost their homes completely.
Every morning at 8 a.m., regardless of the night’s events, they are back at work.
At the start of the full-scale invasion, everything felt uncertain: “We didn’t understand what was happening at first,” Olha recalls. “Then we decided that everyone must contribute to the victory, so we just started working.”
The hospital never stopped operating. Patients kept arriving, and the medical team continued their work under constant pressure. In the beginning, staff and patients would move to shelters during air raids, but it soon became clear that the alarms were constant. “You could stay in a shelter all day,” Olha says. “So we chose to keep working.”
Amidst heavy attacks, Olha noticed a shift that occurred within the team. “People became softer and more attentive,” she explains. “There is a deeper sense of humanity toward the patients now.”
For Olha, her connection to the hospital has only grown stronger during the war. She explains that even during active shelling, the focus remains entirely on the patient. “When you are helping someone, you don’t feel anything else.”
However, the team still had to adapt to practical challenges. Power outages caused by Russian attacks on energy infrastructure became a serious risk for critical departments, where constant electricity is a matter of survival. With support from the United Nations Development Programme and funding from Norway, the hospital was equipped with solar power systems that now keep key units running, including intensive care.
For Olha, this was the fulfilment of a long-standing dream. “I once read about hospitals using solar energy and thought how important that would be,” she says. Today, that idea is a reality that ensures essential services continue even during disruptions.
Despite the challenges, Olha remains in Kharkiv. Her daughter is currently in another part of Ukraine and is still afraid to return, leaving the family separated by the war. Yet, for Olha, the path forward is clear: “You have to make tomorrow better, no matter what is happening around you.”
