Invasion, Supply Disruptions Mean Ukraine Facing Public Health Disaster

The New York Times: Public Health Catastrophe Looms In Ukraine, Experts Warn
A convoy of five vans snaked slowly on Friday from the battered Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, toward Chernihiv, in the northeast of the country. On board were generators, clothes, fuel — and medications needed to treat H.I.V. With a main bridge decimated by shelling, the drivers crept along back roads, hoping to reach Chernihiv on Saturday and begin distributing the drugs to some of the 3,000 residents in desperate need of treatment. (Mandavilli, 3/26)

The Atlantic: Is Ukraine Barreling Toward A COVID Surge?
With its 35 percent vaccination rate, Ukraine was especially vulnerable even before the invasion forced 10 million people from their homes. That much of the population must now cram together in packed train cars and basement bomb shelters will not help matters. For many in Ukraine, though, such concerns are not top of mind. “Their priority is just to flee and survive,” Paul Spiegel, the director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University, told me. In his research, Spiegel has found a strong connection between conflicts and epidemics. But assessing the interplay between disease and violence in Ukraine is difficult right now: After the invasion, reporting on case counts slowed to a trickle. (Stern, 3/25)

AP: US-Backed Group Gets Lifesaving Meds To Ukrainians Amid War 
Thousands of patients in Ukraine are receiving lifesaving medicines to treat HIV and opioid addiction through a U.S.-funded group still operating despite the Russian invasion. Supplies are running short and making deliveries is a complicated calculus with unpredictable risks. Officials say the quiet work of the Alliance for Public Health shows how American assistance is reaching individuals in the besieged nation, on a different wavelength from U.S. diplomatic and military support for the Ukrainian government. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 3/27)

In related news —

AP: First Lady Jill Biden Visits St. Jude, Meets Ukrainian Kids 
First lady Jill Biden traveled to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee on Friday to meet with Ukrainian children with cancer and their families fleeing the war and seeking treatment in the U.S. Biden was greeted when she arrived at the Memphis hospital by president and CEO James Downing; Rick Shadyac, CEO of ALSAC, which raises funds for St. Jude; and actress Marlo Thomas, the daughter of hospital founder and late actor Danny Thomas. (Sainz, 3/25)

In other news from around the world —

AP: Shanghai Starts China's Biggest COVID-19 Lockdown In 2 Years
China began its most extensive lockdown in two years Monday to conduct mass testing and control a growing outbreak in Shanghai as questions are raised about the economic toll of the nation’s “zero-COVID” strategy. China’s financial capital and largest city with 26 million people, Shanghai had managed its smaller, past outbreaks with limited lockdowns of housing compounds and workplaces where the virus was spreading. But the citywide lockdown that will conducted in two phases will be China’s most extensive since the central city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, first confined its 11 million people to their homes for 76 days in early 2020. Millions more have been kept in lockdown since then. (3/28)

AP: British Museum To Remove Sackler Name From Galleries
The British Museum will remove the Sackler name from galleries, rooms and endowments following global outrage over the role the family played in the opioid crisis. The museum is the latest cultural institution to cut ties with the Sacklers. The Sackler name has been removed in recent years from wings and galleries at institutions including the Louvre in Paris and the Serpentine Gallery in London. (3/26)