This nurse makes house calls near Ukraine's front lines
Nurse Lilia Schwez administers a Covid-19 test to 8-year-old Anhelina Yasinska in eastern Ukraine. Anhelina's mother was concerned about her daughter's fever, but she tested negative for Covid-19.
Timothy Fadek/Redux for CNN

This nurse makes house calls near Ukraine's front lines

Photographs by Timothy Fadek/Redux for CNN

Updated 0732 GMT (1532 HKT) February 12, 2022

Nurse Lilia Schwez administers a Covid-19 test to 8-year-old Anhelina Yasinska in eastern Ukraine. Anhelina's mother was concerned about her daughter's fever, but she tested negative for Covid-19.
Timothy Fadek/Redux for CNN

The Ukrainian village of Trokhizbenka used to be a weekend getaway destination, a relaxing place where urban dwellers could travel to take in some fresh forest air.

Then war broke out in 2014.

Now, the village is on the front lines of Ukraine's ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists. Many residents have fled.

But not Lilia Schwez. She has a job to do.

The 56-year-old works as the only nurse in an understaffed and underfunded clinic that serves five villages.

"I did not want to be the only nurse here. I wish there was a full-time doctor and more nurses," she said. "But this is what life handed me."

There is a dental chair in one room of the clinic, but there hasn't been a dentist there in years. Another room is for OB-GYN, but that doctor works just one day every week or two. The nearest hospital, in Severodonetsk, is an hour and a half away.

So Schwez does house calls. Her husband, Vova, drives her to her appointments.

Most of her patients are elderly. Many of them live alone. Covid-19 has been a problem, but it's not the only one.

"Alcoholism and diabetes are rampant," she said. "The stress is causing it."

Schwez knows all about stress. Her home is so close to the line of control, she can see it from her backyard. Her roof was destroyed by shelling in 2015, and now she has "terrible nightmares" about shells raining down on people asleep in their beds.

But she won't abandon those who count on her.

"This is what the war handed me, set me on a new path," she said. "It's OK. This is my life's work now."

Schwez works at a small clinic in the village of Trokhizbenka, which is on the front lines opposite of Russian-backed separatists.
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Schwez unpacks her supplies as she makes house calls this month.
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Schwez walks back to her car after visiting a patient at his home.
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Schwez checks the blood pressure of 83-year-old Ivan Sotnykov at his home in Trokhizbenka.
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Family photos show Schwez and her husband, Vova, in their younger days. She worked as a nurse in Chernobyl three years after the nuclear accident there.
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The clinic where Schwez works is understaffed and underfunded.
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Schwez, center, discusses a patient issue with staff at her clinic.
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Schwez is driven to house calls by her husband, Vova.
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A statue of Kondraty Bulavin, a Ukrainian Cossack who led a rebellion against the Russians in the early 18th century, is seen in Trokhizbenka.
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Schwez listens to a patient's lungs at her clinic.
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Vova drives a Lada Niva, a four-wheel-drive vehicle that he and his wife use to visit patients at home. They moved from the nearby city of Luhansk 15 years ago. "We planned to retire here," Schwez said.
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Schwez receives an urgent call from someone whose 1-month-old baby was ill. She made a house call and the baby tested positive for Covid-19.
Timothy Fadek/Redux for CNN
Since the fighting began in 2014, Schwez has seen her sister, who lives on the separatist side, only twice in eight years. Some of her friends she hasn't seen at all.
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Schwez and her husband are seen at their home in Trokhizbenka.
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Schwez looks out a window at her clinic.
Timothy Fadek/Redux for CNN