There are cities that breathe even when it seems that the very air has turned into silence. Kharkiv is one of them. Its breaths are hundreds of voices speaking words of support in hospital wards, shelters and corridors of social services. And among these voices are the voices of our Kharkiv social workers, who daily draw up a map of human compassion: from project "You should know about tuberculosis" NGO "Labor and Health Social Initiatives" to a center for assistance to victims of domestic violence.
It was there, among stories of pain and beginnings, that Serhiy's story began.
His name is not known to the general public, but more important is how one person, ordinary and a little lonely, was able not only to recover, but also to remind others that human life is always connected by invisible threads of responsibility.
The woman who turned to the center for help remembered him between breaths — like one remembers a dream or someone's forgotten address. She lived in a dormitory at the time, where the walls are thin and you can hear your neighbor's cough better than your own thoughts. Her screening and her daughter's screening came back clean, but the thought of Serhiy wouldn't let go.
She told social workers about him — and they, like true chroniclers of human destinies, found him. Serhiy turned out to be open and friendly: he agreed to be screened, then to be examined. The diagnosis was multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The disease is complex, like a long Latin phrase that needs to be pronounced correctly so as not to lose its meaning.
And he began treatment. First, in the hospital, then at home, with hope and patience. Meanwhile, the world around him was changing: the COVID epidemic was disappearing, leaving behind fear and the experience of isolation, and after it came the war — even closer, even more real. In the first months of the full-scale invasion, social workers themselves delivered the medicine — like medieval travelers carrying healing potions through ruins.
And yet, the treatment was over. Serhiy recovered. Not because fate was kind, but because there were those around him who never tired of believing in the common breath of the city.
There are still many stories in Kharkiv. Some of them begin with a cough, others with compassion. But they all lead to one conclusion that Umberto Eco himself could have written:
Human life is a chain of breathing, in which each breath of one person becomes a chance for another.
Project "You should know about tuberculosis" NGO "Labor and Health Social Initiatives" with the support of BF «Public Health Alliance» under a grant from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.