Family Medicine and the Primary Health Care System in Ukraine

Caring for communities under pressure — and strengthening the doctors who keep showing up

Ukraine’s primary health care system has undergone major reform in recent years, moving toward a family medicine model in which doctors provide broad, continuous care for people of all ages. Before the full-scale invasion, more than 30 million Ukrainians had enrolled with primary care doctors, and family medicine was becoming an increasingly important part of the country’s health system.

But war has changed everything.

Today, family doctors in Ukraine are caring for patients in the shadow of missile attacks, damaged infrastructure, disrupted supply chains, staff shortages, displacement, and enormous psychological strain. And yet, they continue to serve.

In many ways, family medicine in Ukraine now looks like rural and remote medicine under extreme pressure: broad scope, limited backup, difficult logistics, and constant adaptation.

What we have seen firsthand

In 2025, our team travelled across Ukraine — including Lviv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, and nearby villages — working alongside Ukrainian doctors and health workers.

What stood out was not only the destruction, but the persistence of care.

Clinics were still running.
Doctors were still showing up.
Patients were still waiting.

But beneath that resilience was a quieter crisis: a system under pressure not only from war, but from professional isolation, exhaustion, and disrupted access to continuing education and support.

One doctor told us:

“We are still treating everything. But sometimes we don’t know if we are doing it the best way anymore.”

This is not only a crisis of buildings, equipment, and medicines.
It is also a crisis of connection — to knowledge, to peers, to mentorship, and to ongoing learning.