Ukraine doctors get urgent training through fellowship
Ali Dzhemiliev was a first-year medical student in Crimea in 2014 when Russian invaders forced him to leave the region for a school in Kyiv. Much worse was still to come. Eight years later, as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022, Dzhemiliev was already a doctor, but still completing his residency in surgery. The days ahead were an ordeal. “It was a new challenge for all of us to conduct and continue our surgical education in wartime,” he said. Dzhemiliev lived close to Bucha, a city north of Kyiv now infamous for Russian atrocities against civilians. As the invasion intensified, he headed west, eventually joining the staff at a hospital near Ternopil. For 2½ months, he slept in the wards, ate the same food as patients, and performed surgery, often at night. In May, Dzhemiliev heard about Harvard’s Scholars at Risk program from the nonprofit Global Medical Knowledge Alliance. “Being a...