Ukraine is getting an additional USD 1.7 billion in assistance from the US government and the World Bank to pay the salaries of its beleaguered health care workers and provide other essential services.
The money coming Tuesday from the US Agency for International Development, the Treasury Department and the World Bank is meant to alleviate the acute budget deficit caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin's “brutal war of aggression”, USAID said in a statement. While many medical staffers have left Ukraine, some hospitals have shut down and other hospitals have been bombed. The health workers who remain in Ukraine do their jobs under dire circumstances.
Viktor Liashko, Ukraine's minister of health, said paying health workers' salaries is becoming more difficult each month “due to the overwhelming burden of war". “USD 1.7 billion is not just yet another financial support; it is an investment that makes us a step closer to victory," Liashko said in a statement.