For Ukrainian refugees, seeing the doctor can be worth a risky trip home

KYIV – She lives in a French town near St Tropez that she calls “paradise”, where she and her young son have taken refuge from the war back home in Ukraine. But when Ms Liudmyla Gurenchuk and her son needed to see doctors this autumn, they made the 2092km trek back to Kyiv, leaving the picturesque tranquillity of the off-season Riviera for a city that is regularly struck with drones and missiles.

Why take the risk? According to her and other Ukrainian refugees, it is simple: they say the opportunity to receive treatment that can be more affordable and efficient than in many European countries outweighs the dangers of returning home.

“Medicine is just better in Ukraine,” said Ms Gurenchuk, 39, as she waited to get her thyroid checked at an ultrasound centre.

“It’s cheaper, it’s faster” and the doctors are more attentive, she said. “That’s why I come every time I can.”

A survey by the United Nations Refugee Agency indicated that Ms Gurenchuk is one of about 300,000 Ukrainian refugees living in Europe who have made trips back to their homeland for healthcare.

They are part of a wave of refugees – more than two million – who have travelled back and forth between Ukraine and their temporary homes in other European countries to visit relatives, obtain official documents or check on their property.

Trains crossing into Ukraine are often packed with families returning for the school holidays, in many cases to visit the husbands and fathers left behind since the government barred most men from leaving during the war.

Historians and sociologists say the scale of these trips is unusual in recent history, owing in good part to the geography of the conflict in Ukraine, where vast swathes of territory remain relatively safe and are accessible from the rest of mainland Europe.

The brief returns, those experts add, show that Ukrainian refugees are adapting to the war as it drags on, trying to strike a balance between staying in safer lands abroad and reconnecting with their past lives at home.

Professor Ioulia Shukan, a sociologist at Paris Nanterre University who studies the social impact of the war in Ukraine, said it was a question of “rebuilding a relationship with your homeland without being completely resettled”.

She said that medical appointments, a fixture of everyday life, contributed to restoring “a semblance of normality” even if they required an extensive and potentially dangerous journey.

It’s “a bit about reclaiming your past life”, Prof Shukan said.

Nearly 40 per cent of the 5.8 million Ukrainian refugees living in other European countries have returned home at least once, according to the UN survey – a figure that Dr Thomas Chopard, a historian at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, said was significantly higher than during previous European conflicts, such as World War II.

“Back then, there were very few returns,” Dr Chopard said, because in most cases that would have meant going back to a territory in the throes of fighting or under occupation.

By contrast, 80 per cent of Ukraine’s territory is currently free of Russian forces, and while Ukrainian troops continue to battle hard in the south and east, several areas in the west have been spared the fighting for the most part.

Ms Gurenchuk acknowledged that, unlike with many other refugees, European host countries had granted Ukrainians “privileges” such as work permits and freedom of movement, making it easier for them to come and go.

“This war is different,” she said.

The main motivation for people to return home is to visit relatives. But few expected that another top reason would be to see their doctors.

On her most recent trip home, Ms Gurenchuk dashed from a modern ultrasound centre, to the cramped apartment of a folk healer and next to the colourless corridors of a public hospital, where a paediatrician examined her seven-year-old son Davyd.

Many refugees said that their trips home had been prompted by frustration with health systems in Europe that they see as deficient. That has been particularly true in Britain, where there have been news reports of refugees’ dissatisfaction with the crisis-hit National Health Service.

Ms Maiia Habruk, a 31-year-old media producer, was living in London when she developed a severe sore throat. She said that she had waited two weeks to see a British doctor, who prescribed mild pain relief.

Back in her hometown, Dnipro, in central-eastern Ukraine, a doctor identified an infected wisdom tooth as having caused the soreness and arranged for its immediate removal.

“It took me five days – go to Dnipro, visit the doctor, come back to London – versus two weeks in Britain,” Ms Habruk said. “That was worth the trip.”

Refugees cite the language barrier and price as other reasons for seeking treatment back home.

Most healthcare in Ukraine, as it is in countries like Britain and France, is free in the public system. But treatment that is not covered in some countries, such as dental work or more specialised care, is far cheaper in Ukraine.

Dr Chopard, the historian, said that the trips home also helped refugees maintain hope of a final return, which Ukraine will need if it is to rebuild.

Refugees often see themselves as permanent exiles, he noted, but the UN survey showed that more than three-quarters of Ukrainians planned to go back.

Ms Gurenchuk said that she would return to live in Ukraine only when the war was over. But after a week in Kyiv, Davyd seemed enthusiastic about coming back for good.

On the way back from the paediatrician, as night fell, he and his mother passed the apartment where they lived before the war.

“I want to live here!” Davyd said. NYTIMES