As of May 2024, Médecins du Monde Greece launched the implementation of a new, three-year project in Ukraine, which is part of the axis of emergency actions as well as the country’s long-term recovery. Under the title “Beyond Trauma: Scaling Up Community Mental Health Care for Children and Youth at Risk in Ukraine’s Conflict Affected Communities” and focusing on the Sumy, Kharkiv, Chernivtsi and Khmelnytskyi regions, the project supports Ukraine’s efforts to reform its mental health system according to modern scientific standards, overcoming outdated logics that lead to discrimination, isolation and stigmatisation of people facing mental health problems.
The project focuses on children, young people and the most vulnerable groups of the population, and offers multi-level support at local level through training, restructuring of facilities, implementation of new qualitative methodologies and provision of high-quality mental health and psychosocial support services. Thus, it addresses the need for better local mental health services and stigma reduction in the regions of Ukraine where it is focused, with a particular focus on children and young people.
More specifically, the project aims to:
- strengthen the ability of community-based and primary health care institutions to provide Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS);
- reduce barriers to accessing mental health services for communities; and
- reduce distress levels and improve the well-being among communities.
MdM-Greece started its actions in Ukraine already in February 2022. Since the emergency response to the humanitarian crisis until today, the organization is still active in Chernivtsi and Sumy regions, providing medical and psychosocial support to the civilian population, while at the same time contributing substantially, for over two years by now, to the building rehabilitation and upgrading of hospitals and supporting local health systems.
The ongoing operations of MdM-Greece are dictated by field experience and needs assessment, and aim both to meet the critical needs created by the war and to address long-standing deficiencies and dysfunctions of local health institutions, which are now struggling even more to cope with pre-existing, new and growing needs of the suffering Ukrainian people.
The project is implemented with funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in particular the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the Ukraine Partnership Facility (https://english.rvo.nl/). The consortium of partners consists of War Child Netherlands and War Child Alliance (project leader), Médecins du Monde Greece, Médecins du Monde Netherlands, AFEW Ukraine and USSF Ukraine.
Médecins du Monde in Ukraine for #AsLongAsItTakes