The ombudsman reported “hundreds of hospitalizations” due to pneumonia outbreaks in training centers

In some training centers, hundreds of cases of hospitalization for pneumonia are being recorded among mobilized servicemen.

This was stated by military ombudsman Olha Reshetylova in an interview with RBC-Ukraine published on April 6.

She said that in December, while at a hospital, she heard about a “colossal figure” from one of the training centers regarding hospitalizations for complications from pneumonia.

“We were talking about hundreds of cases from just one center. We were very surprised, initiated an inspection, invited the Ministry of Defense’s health department, went there, and found out that there were only three doctors for a huge training center,” she said.

The ombudsman pointed out that all the other medical personnel had been reassigned to the military medical commission.

“These doctors physically do not have time even to visit all the training battalions. And they hospitalize people only when there are already obvious signs of serious complications,” Reshetylova noted.

She explained that the reason for such outbreaks is that servicemen were arriving for basic military training already ill, after spending long periods in territorial recruitment centers under improper conditions. According to her, the mobilized men began getting sick even before they arrived at the training centers for basic military preparation. Once there, while staying in enclosed spaces, they also started falling ill on a mass scale.

Reshetylova also said that training centers are often afraid to hospitalize the sick because the largest number of unauthorized absences occurs precisely from hospitals.

“There were cases when we intervened in such a situation and demanded that a man be hospitalized. He was finally hospitalized, and then he ran away,” she said.

Earlier, First Deputy Military Ombudsman Ruslan Tsyhankov said in an interview with Radio Svoboda, published on March 31, that five servicemen from the 425th Separate Assault Regiment “Skala” of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had died of pneumonia. An inspection is currently being conducted into that case.