The “Restoring Donbas” calls on to carry out emergency environmental measures in the East of Ukraine

23:47 / 01 Jul. 2017 / 813

The risk of epidemics and industrial accident in Toretsk, Donetsk region – it is a part of global consequences of the war in Donbass, which have been accumulating for the last three years. It was stated by the “Restoring Donbas” community initiative of Oleksandr Klymenko on June 29.

Experts of the organization are confident that situation in the region will become unpredictable without operational and professional actions of the authorities.

“According to our monitoring, environmental risks for Donbas and Ukraine grow exponentially during the last year. It is not about sporadic problems. It comes about systemic threat to life and health of residents of the region and country”, – the statement claims.

The initiative has already named the statistics. According to this data, about four hundred potentially dangerous objects, nearly three hundred mines and quarries harmful to the environment, as well as about 1200 slagheaps (almost 300 among it are constantly burning) are located in Donetsk region.

Nowadays, taking into account the specifics of the region, all the problems are being accumulated and mixed. Thus, outbreak of infections due to problems with water supply – it is not the only danger in Toretsk. People are threatened with massive methane poisoning, which rises out of the flooded city mines. Accumulation of this gas in basements and other enclosed premises of the city are fraught with autoignition and explosions.

Representatives of the «Restoring Donbas» put emphasize on critical situation in the medicine of the region. In June 2015, during a joint roundtable with World Health Organization, UNDP, “Doctors Without Borders”, experts of the organization warned about the fact that plethora doctors left the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions after a year of hostilities. That time, number of doctors in the region has decreased by 4.5 times.

By today, after three years of the war, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs made no efforts in order to resolve this problem. The situation has only worsened. There is a problem of violation of the integrity of the medical care system in the region. The number of Primary health care centers have been significantly decreased, hospital and ambulatory network has been halved. There are no coherent medical facilities of the third level of accreditation, which can provide high-tech medical care, on Donbas territories under Ukrainian control.

As a result, risks of spreading of epidemics and consequences of industrial accidents become more dangerous for Donbas. Full blocking of the crossing the demarcation line, which can be implemented by the power due to epidemics, is not only unacceptable, but it will not solve the problem either. Infections will be spread regardless of the checking points.

“We call on all the forces that can influence on the situation in the East of Ukraine, to be prudent. If we do not now establish an effective regime of truce and do not solve these problems, the point of no return will be passed. We will not get Ukrainian Donbas. We will get another exclusion zone in the country (area of tens of thousands of square kilometers). It is naive to believe that these consequences will affect only two regions”, – representatives of the organization stressed.

Let us recall, the “Restoring Donbas” community initiative was founded in November 2014 by Oleksandr Klymenko, Ukrainian politician and the leader of the “Uspishna Kraina” party. Nowadays, the initiative unites 120 thousand people via its projects and online-activity. Members of the initiative work together in order to find ways out of the crisis caused by the military conflict, and paths for subsequent development of the region.

The restoring-donbass.com website - is an interactive platform, which was created by the "Restoring Donbas" community initiative of Oleksandr Klymenko. The latest news, blogs and analysis, background information and useful ads for IDPs and Donbas residents are available on the website.