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In Lviv, a defender who lost his sight in the war learns to orient himself in space anew

36-year-old soldier Oleksandr Yurchenko lost his sight on the battlefield, made his way blindly and courageously accepted the news that he would never be able to see again.

Today, the defender is learning to orient himself in space anew and feel the world around him by touch. And the specialists of the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center help him in this.

Oleksandr Yurchenko is a 36-year-old volunteer from the town of Pryluky, Chernihiv region. The soldier was seriously wounded at the end of November 2023 in the Kupyansk direction. It was mortar shelling. Oleksandr remembers how he felt that his hands and face were cut, and his eyes turned black. In order to survive, he had to randomly get out of the shelling. Oleksandr was walking blindly through the forest and miraculously came across the dugout of “his”.

The wounded defender was evacuated from the front line to one of the Kharkiv hospitals. He says that he did not even ask if he would see again. Because, they say, he immediately realized that he had lost his sight forever.

“I’m not one to give up. Life goes on,” says Oleksandr already at the NEZLAMNA center, where he is undergoing rehabilitation and adapting to life in new circumstances. Currently, an occupational therapist works with him, who makes an individual program of classes for the patient. Together with a specialist, the defender learns to navigate in space, recognize household objects and even use a computer.

Rehabilitation of the blind is a very popular field. The number of wounded defenders who have partially or completely lost their sight increases with each passing day of the war. According to the National Health Service of Ukraine, only from February 2022 to July 2023, almost 39,000 people were diagnosed with blindness and low vision for the first time. In institutions of higher education, there are still no certified training programs for training physical and occupational therapists to work specifically with blind patients. Therefore, rehabilitation center specialists develop such programs on their own. Specialists of the NEZLAMNI Center manage to develop them within the framework of the joint project with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) “Let’s see victory: a rehabilitation program for people with visual impairments”, which was implemented with the financial support of the Japanese government. Within the scope of the project, special equipment was purchased for the recovery and adaptation of such patients, as well as a new model of rehabilitation was developed. It includes work on adaptation and development of life-necessary skills in new conditions, such as spatial orientation, mobility, housekeeping, telephone and computer use. In addition, within the framework of this project, the NEZLAMNI center will be provided with equipment for ocular prosthetics and training of ophthalmologists-prosthetists, physiotherapists and a psychologist will be provided. All this indicates a comprehensive approach and the creation of all appropriate conditions for the rehabilitation of patients with visual impairments.

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The UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center is a unique place where adults and children affected by the war receive comprehensive qualified medical care. This is reconstructive surgery, orthopedics and robotic prosthetics. Victims are not only fitted with prostheses, they are made here. The center also deals with physical, psychological and psychosocial rehabilitation of injured soldiers and civilians. The goal of the center is to ensure that people with war injuries do not have to go abroad for treatment, but that they can be rescued, prosthetics, and rehabilitated in Ukraine. Project website: https://unbroken.org.ua/

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