Doctor from FAU Occupational Medical Service helps refugees

Dr. Carina Knobloch from the FAU Occupational Medical Service has been back in Erlangen for a few days now and is still rather tired after spending time helping refugees in the town of Hummené in eastern Slovakia. She spent two weeks working as a volunteer in the Fast Assistance Samaritan Team (FAST) of the Workers’ Samaritan Federation (ASB) on the border with Ukraine. The University granted Dr. Knobloch special leave to perform this important work providing medical care to people who have fled Ukraine because of the war and have arrived over the border in Slovakia.

Refugees need shelter and assistance

“Young and old women, mothers with their children and also older men arrive in Hummené from Ukraine day after day,” the doctor reports. “They are all fleeing from the war and need shelter and assistance.” Refugees receive both in emergency shelters. For example in Hummené, a town in eastern Slovakia, which is only around 50 kilometers from the border with Ukraine. The first refugees from Ukraine started arriving here very early on and the Slovakian Workers’ Samaritan Federation and the local fire service set up simple camps as emergency accommodation.

“Each camp has capacity for between 100 and 300 refugees,” explains Knobloch. “The teams on site register the people, who are often completely exhausted and traumatized, when they arrive, give them food and water, take care of the children, organize counseling and also provide medical care.” This is what Dr. Carina Knobloch and six colleagues from Germany and the Czech Republic did for two weeks during their assignment with FAST.

Teams of volunteers help in border region

“To me, this is just part and parcel of my life,” the young doctor says. She has been volunteering with the Bavarian ASB since she was 14. Firstly as a school first aider, then on several occasions as a volunteer for civil protection in areas affected by flooding such as Bavaria in 2013 and in the Ahr valley in 2021, and now as a doctor in a provisional clinic on the Ukrainian border.

Most cases in the clinic are “common health problems such as high blood pressure or small injuries,” she wrote in her volunteers’ diary on the Bavarian ASB’s Facebook page. She also cared for patients with neck and stomach pains, with blisters on their feet and for patients with chronic conditions who needed their medication.

There were more serious cases, of course. On April 1 she wrote about an 86 year old patient who “arrived yesterday and who had very severe frostbite on both feet due to the cold winter temperatures. Areas of necrosis had become infected, so we had to transfer him to the local hospital for emergency surgery.” The case affected her deeply and Knobloch is very happy that the man and his daughter who accompanied him are now living with relatives in Bavaria.

Volunteers’ diary on Facebook

Dr. Carina Knobloch and her colleague Hannah wrote about their experiences on the Bavarian ASB’s Facebook page. Together they wrote about their personal experiences and posted photos from the camp in Hummené.

Link to the volunteers’ diary

Follow-up sessions for volunteers

Cases such as this one are discussed by the FAST team members every evening in their follow-up sessions. “They were compulsory for everyone,” says Knobloch. “We used the sessions to reflect on the day and to talk about what went well or what particularly affected us.” This is important as helpers also need help sometimes. Bearing this in mind, all volunteers took part in a debriefing conducted by two experienced colleagues when they returned to Germany.

Commitment to a common cause

Dr. Carina Knobloch didn’t require any special assistance this time as she had many positive experiences during her assignment. For example, in the diary on April 24, she wrote that she is now “(almost) an expert in reading the Cyrillic alphabet and working with Czech keyboards.” And in our interview, she said “It’s great to see people from a wide range of countries helping out and finding creative solutions for almost every problem.”

Her next assignment will come for sure, but for the moment, she is back at her “normal” job as a doctor at the Occupational Medical Service at FAU. “The aim of the service is to prevent work-related health problems and occupational diseases,” she says and she is happy that this role only involves prevention and not crisis intervention. A team from the ASB in Austria is currently providing assistance in Hummené, and they will be followed by volunteers from Italy.