Interview with Bashar Kailani: Field Coordinator in Ukraine

Before you came to Ukraine, you worked with Doctors of the World/Médecins du Monde in Syria. Did that experience help you for your work in Ukraine?
The Syrian experience did teach me a lot of things about how to handle the situation. I didn’t have the same feeling of panic that a person might feel who has not been exposed to that kind of situation before. You become much calmer with experience. This helped me a lot during the evacuation. It wasn’t a surprise, of course, but the steps in my head were very clear.
Could you talk a bit about the challenges when evacuating the team? 
The most intense part of that trip was the part from Dnipro to Vinnytsia. All the gas stations that had fuel had huge queues, and you could only get 20 liters at a time. But I had that in mind from the Syrian experience. So I had my tank full, I was ready to go. We had enough water, we had enough food supplies for the road and the most essential files that we needed to keep with us, employment files for example. We had to take many detours, because of shelling and information about airstrikes. At some point, we were really low on fuel. The most intense moments were when you saw those jet fighters on top of your head, some of them very close to you. You could see the black smoke from the locations that had been attacked
You initially evacuated the team to Romania. Was it difficult to cross the border?
When we were trying to evacuate from Chernivtsi to Romania, there was a line of vehicles that was almost 12 km long. We had an SUV, so we were also able to go off-road a little bit and take a detour. When we came to another crossing, we saw hundreds of pedestrians, mostly Indian and African students. They were not allowed to cross the border. It was freezing cold. The small supermarkets and restaurants in the areas had mostly run out of food. But non-Ukrainians were also denied using the washrooms, even a cup of tea. Some of them had to light fires in the nearby woods to stay warm. Our team, the medical coordinator, the translator, the general coordinator, and I waited about 16 to 18 hours to cross. Sleeping in the car during the night, I was awoken by border guards apparently firing into the air to keep people from crossing by force. 
Now you’re back in Ukraine, among other things, working on supplying hospitals and health centers with badly needed medical supplies. Can you explain why this is such a difficult and sometimes long process?
There are some hospitals that cannot get their medical supplies, although they bought them. They just sit in the warehouses somewhere because the war has interrupted the supply chain. Some contractors’ trucks have been destroyed, some use fuel that is rare to find, some routes have become longer, so now there is a higher price rate. Some truck drivers have also left the country or are unwilling to go to certain locations. Then there are the highways. Many of them are just one or two-way roads and there are a lot of traffic jams – also because of the massive IDP movement in some areas. A trip that would normally take about eight hours can take you twice as long.
How does MdM manage to support health facilities with medical supplies, nevertheless?
To overcome these challenges, you need to build a big network with lots of private contractors or suppliers and lots of community-based organizations. For example, we have supported a hospital in Donetsk oblast to get lifesaving items to carry out dialysis from Kiev. The hospital purchased the items before the war was declared, but because of the war the supplier could not deliver. So we identified a transport company that was willing to pick up the items from the warehouse in Kiev and bring them to Donetsk.

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International Women Day

Where did your passion for global health begin, and what led you to focus specifically on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care in humanitarian crises?

From a young age I knew I wanted to travel and learn new languages. In College I loved sociology, demography, economics, and global affairs.

After my bachelors, I joined the Peace Corps, and I solidified my interest in women’s health and SRH. Women always came to me and asked questions about pregnancy, menstruation, contraception, and safety.

They wanted to know how not to have babies every year. Cameroon, for example, was pronatalist at the time and there were no services available, no family planning. So, I decided that was what I was going to work on.

How has your experience in the field shaped your stance as a board member of Doctors of the World?

After I got a master’s degree in Public Health in Population and Family Planning, I returned overseas to work in the field for another 8 years. I need to be on the ground and see how things work to really be able to do a good job. I think that field sense, what’s really feasible, what is missing, how to get things done. That is what I bring to the board.

The other piece is my obsession with data. When it comes to programs, we need to have clear objectives about what we want to obtain, and then we need to measure those. We need to know what is working and what isn’t. That way we can make improvements. It’s a weak component of many organizations. So, I push on the board to do that. Measurement is key.

And then there is dissemination, getting the news out to the field. So, once you know there are programs working, how they’re working, and how it can be made to work better, we need to share with other organizations, with the professional field, and of course the communities. This way we don’t need to reinvent the wheel each time and can learn from other programs. So, sending the word out is also what I’m trying to accomplish on the board.

Can you discuss a specific program you have worked on in your career that you are particularly proud of?
I’ve loved all my programs, and I really am very proud of the work I’ve done. The early programs, which for me were in the 80s starting with the first ever family planning programs in so many countries in Western and Eastern Africa, was very exciting. It was brand new in public health systems. People were concerned, wondering if the men were going to revolt or if the women were going to storm the streets! We studied, tested, measured to understand not only the health effects, but all the other implications in family life. It worked and countries made the programs larger. That was thrilling!

I guess that’s been the theme of my career, let’s do something that’s never been done before and see what happens!

I also co-founded RAISE with Sarah Casey. We took on not only services and research, but also advocacy, education, medical training, all aspects to make this standard in humanitarian organizations. It’s a great program that affected the field very broadly.

Do you have any guidance/advice for women looking to work on the field or in a humanitarian organization in general?

You must listen, listen to women, to colleagues. And you must be respectful. As public health professionals, we bring lots of skills to the table, but the other partners bring their awareness and knowledge too. You don’t have all the answers and you must work together to develop new solutions.
People interested in getting into this field need to keep in mind that it’s hard. It can be hard physically and it’s searing on the soul. Sometimes you see things that nobody should ever see or experience, and it can be dangerous. Also, any job that requires frequent absences can weigh on your personal life. So young people coming into their career need to think about what they want professionally and in their personal life and find the right balance.

What are your biggest concerns regarding the impact that the Russian-Ukrainian war will have on the sexual & reproductive health of the population?

If prior emergencies are of any guide, Sexual and Reproductive Health will be sidelined. It’s not food, water, shelter, or sanitation. We need to do everything and that is incredibly difficult. Unfortunately, when it comes to SRH, it’s always secondary and that’s because women are seen as second-class citizens.
The health needs remain there despite the crisis; women are still pregnant, women are still having sex, women still don’t want to get pregnant, women still want to terminate pregnancies safely, women are still going to get STIs, and women are still experiencing gender-based violence. There’s a whole range of reproductive health services that are needed. And it’s very likely they’re not going to be there and that’s a big problem.
In addition, there’s one specific concern with this current crisis. Ukraine has quite a liberal abortion policy, while Poland for example (where a large part of the population is going) has very restrictive abortion policies. Many Ukrainian women who find themselves in Poland will discover that they can’t get the kind of care that they are accustomed to.

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