Ekaterina Nozhevnikova, who heads the "Monsters Corporation" charitable foundation, does not need to be introduced - she is known and appreciated throughout Ukraine, and the thousands of people saved by her are simply idolized. In exclusive interview with ElitExpert she told whether her hands fall from constant challenges and problems; explained why she is disappointed in Ukrainian society; explained the reasons for the collapse of the medical system in the first waves of the pandemic and admitted whether it is difficult to refuse terminally ill people whom you cannot help...
"I APPRECIATE AWARDS WITH HUMOR"
— Last year, you were awarded the Order of Princess Olga by the decree of the President, before that the deputies of the regional council awarded you the title "Honorary Citizen of Odessa Region". By the way, this is the rare case when even staunch political opponents unanimously vote "for"... How unexpected was this award for you and how do you feel about it in general?
— I do not relate to this in any way, and until recently I categorically refused any awards. However, there are different situations. If some hospital, which we helped, issues a letter to us, then this is normal. And when the government awards - and precisely for the work that it had to do itself, it is very strange.
I accepted the Order of Princess Olga, because I received a call from an acquaintance from Kyiv who does a lot of good for the country, they asked me, they said that everyone voted for my award, this is such a sincere initiative, and that the order is given for the fight against covid. After all, even developed states were not ready for such a situation and had a hard time going through it, which speaks volumes about our country, where the help of volunteers was simply necessary. Therefore, I agreed, but I did not go to the award itself, so as not to participate in a pathetic event. I was promised to bring this order.
As for the title "Honorary Citizen of the Odessa Region", this is definitely a touching story. The diploma is with my parents - they are delighted, and I treat it with humor. We laughed for a long time when we found out what benefits an Honorary Citizen is entitled to. For example, a free place in the cemetery, a memorial plaque that will be hung on the house with the text: "Lived and worked here...".
My co-workers said that someone is hesitant to hang these signs, since we are constantly moving, we still have not had a permanent place.
In general, I treat awards more with humor than with any reverence, and I never write about my awards on social networks, I don't flaunt it.
On the other hand, they say that such awards help the work of our foundation, because for some people it is a litmus test, evidence that the foundation can be trusted.
"I WILL NEVER GO INTO POLITICS"
— You have become one of the few unifying figures in our society, regardless of your convictions and political views. Surely, many political parties want to get you into their ranks, perhaps to take you to the Verkhovna Rada. Admit it - offers coming in? How do you feel about them?
— Of course, I was invited to local deputies and to the Rada of several parties at once. But it is not interesting to me, so I will never go there. One is not a warrior in the field, and there, unfortunately, only a few are trying to do something. I believe that it is better to be in a place where I will be useful than to become a kind of "city madwoman" in the Council. I know a member of parliament, I know a lot about this kitchen from the inside, and it does not entice me at all. Especially since many people go there to solve either their own problems or the problems of those behind them. We are on our own, no one is behind us, there is me, there are girls, we do what we can.
— What if it is not politics, but state structures, the same Ministry of Health? After all, it is customary in our country to say that there is not enough personnel in the country, and your experience in the field of medicine could be very useful...
- The same. Now I have no superiors. I consult with the team on these or other issues, but the final decision is always mine. It is I who decide what to do, how to do it, and I am responsible for everything. I would not be able to work in the state system. It's not that I'm afraid it won't work. I'm not used to being silent when I see wrong actions, and the system works according to its own rules, and we all know what they are. To come there so that it doesn't work and leave after a month? After all, I will not sign illegal tenders, give kickbacks, etc. Then what is the meaning of this? Few people survive in this system.
"I DID NOT WANT TO CREATE A CHARITY FUND"
— Let's go back a few years to the time when the fund was created. What was your initial goal?
- I will say frankly - there was no personal goal. It's just 2014, the war started, and everyone could somehow participate in what was happening in the country. We were already volunteers then, we had a group at the Odesa Forum, we helped the elderly. And in the summer, on June 10, the regional state administration called, said that they had brought five hundred orphaned children from the Luhansk region to Odessa, and asked if we could help. Many of the children were with only one package - whatever they managed to grab, they left with that.
We consider this day, June 10, to be the birth of our team, which later became the "Monster Corporation" fund. However, even if you look at interviews from that time, we always said that now it will end, and we will go home and go about our business again.
Well, in 2017, it all got so twisted and reached such a scale and size that it was necessary to decide what to do next. After all, even before that, the funds went to "volunteer cash registers", which, in fact, were considered illegal. I did not want to create a foundation, because I was prejudiced against charitable foundations. But they convinced me - and I agreed, and in order to change the attitude of society towards such funds, skepticism and mistrust will prevail. Show that you can work honestly and openly.
— One of your first referrals is burn patients...
- Yes, in the sixteenth or seventeenth years we started this work. At that time we were not yet a foundation, just a volunteer initiative. In 2016, the first ward was made in the burn department. Unfortunately, children with burns lie for a long time, several months, and I remember a conversation with the head of regional health at the time: they told me, they say, it doesn't matter what wards they are in, the main thing is that they are treated well. But we thought otherwise - these are children, and in 90% of cases they are there because of their parents, and we want them to be treated in normal human conditions. And there was a nightmare - everything was gray, gloomy, plaster was falling from the ceiling... We made repairs, hung beautiful blinds, installed night lamps, put up a TV so that the children could watch cartoons. It turned out very cool. Then, a month later, we made another ward. And a few months later, they attacked the entire burn department. To be honest, we didn't think that we would be able to do it, because there are operating rooms, dressing rooms, resuscitation rooms, children's rooms, and adult rooms. But people responded, the process started. We practically lived in this department for two and a half months, all together we helped the builders. And everything turned out, it's very beautiful there now.
"DESPITE COvid, OTHER PROJECTS HAVE NOT BEEN CLOSED"
— Now you mainly deal with patients COVID-19. Are other projects not related to the pandemic suspended? Or do you manage to do other things as well?
- No, nothing was suspended. If we continue the topic of repairs, now, for example, it was possible to completely repair the reception and diagnostic department of the Children's Regional Hospital. Repairs were made in traumatology, now we are making repairs in children's cardiology. There were no bathrooms at all, and the children had to go to another department from cardiology. Plus, we are building a new residency there. That is, nothing stops, the only thing is that we would deal with it on a much larger scale. But the pandemic, unfortunately, made its adjustments.
— Surely, corrections had to be made in the situation with the architectural monument donated to the foundation on Frantzuzsky boulevard - the "Dacha of the Anatra family", which you renamed the "Castle of Monsters". Tell me what awaits this building in the future? In what condition is it now, do you remember that it required restoration and repair?
— Yes, this building was donated to the Monster Corporation in 2019. It is more than a hundred years old, it is in a state of emergency and it is impossible to stay in it. The approximate cost of ego repair and restoration is 2,2 million dollars. At the same time, you need to understand that you can't just come there and start repairing a roof or a wall. This is an architectural monument, where not a single step can be taken without documentation and permission.
We are supporting the building, we managed to patch the roof, but we are not moving forward yet. I call him our most difficult intensive care patient, and the main thing is that he does not become palliative. I think this process will drag on for years, as it is very difficult to collect funds for buildings in Odessa, especially since this is a colossal sum.
Of course, there were offers, there were people who wanted to help, but at the same time they set conditions that I could not agree to. I want this building to have an "open space", I want to restore it, preserving the authenticity as much as possible, but I was offered to rebuild it, redo it... It is clear that people with a lot of money want to dictate the conditions, and I do not like, as I have already said, to someone was standing above me and telling me what to do.
And yet, in the spring, we plan to make a project of restoration of the roof, strengthening of the foundation - for this, we need to go through a lot of coordination. Well, besides that, now we are building an office next to the "castle", on the land that was given to us, and I hope that in one and a half to two months we will move there and it will become easier. After all, you need to constantly take care of the "castle", and when we move to it side by side, it will become easier. Well, let's slowly start collecting money.
"OUR OFFICE HAS ONLY SIX EMPLOYEES"
— The "Monster Corporation" fund is primarily associated with your name, and few people know how many employees you have, what they do... Tell us about the structure of the fund.
— First, we have a team of co-founders. This is me, this is Alexandra Tysheykina, Victoria Belaya and Dina Kazatsker. We have been friends for many years, and when we created the foundation, we made such a decision to support and control each other. But still, I am the locomotive of the fund, and all the responsibility rests on me.
In addition, we have full-time employees who are constantly in the office - six of them. Almost all of them are former volunteers who worked with us for free since 2014 and for a long time.
Plus there are lawyers and three accountants, as the volumes are colossal. But even so, this is not enough: I would certainly like to expand the staff. We need an SMM person who would promote the fund in all social networks, we also need one more employee in the office... But that's it for now.
— And how often do you come across inspections of the fund's activities?
- It happened. Especially last year, when we made history with the presidential "covid" fund. Then someone did not come to us. But in principle, we never have any questions. I am very serious about reporting — we have everything open, come and see.
"WE CANNOT HELP EVERYONE"
— It is clear that absolutely everything is contacting you today. How do you choose who is helped and who is not, and how do you generally recover psychologically after having to refuse people?
— We have a lot of oncology patients. But we do not deal with it. Yes, it is very difficult. Just today a girl called, she has a child with leukemia, who immediately said that she understands that we do not deal with oncology, but she has nowhere else to go. I explained to her our rules, our charter, and most importantly, then suggested what to do next, because the problem is that many simply do not know where to go and who to turn to.
But such situations are part of my job. About oncology, they may call 5-10 times a day, and after we refuse, they curse us... But we can't help everyone, it's simply unrealistic, so we were forced to define the parameters by which we hire people. After all, there are such cases - they say, help my boy urgently, he needs an operation, a joint needs to be changed. We ask how old he is, and we learn that the boy is no longer a boy, but he is under forty years old, and secondly, he has no children, and there is no threat to his life or health. The fact is that we sometimes take adults if the lives of their children depend on it, how will they live if their parents are gone.
In exceptional cases, we can even take cancer patients, not for chemotherapy, but, for example, for surgery. Last year, they took a woman over 60 years old, her daughter had died, and she herself was raising three young children, her grandchildren, and in addition, she had an elderly mother in her arms. That is, if she is not rescued, the three children will end up in an orphanage, and the old grandmother will end up in a nursing home.
Of course, behind each appeal is someone's fate, and everything is very complicated. But we prescribed for ourselves certain parameters for help, we follow this scheme, and in principle, the majority are eliminated even on calls.
Most often, girls do not make mistakes and refuse to do business. However, there are times when I make the second decision. There was such a case with Katya and Igor: a cabin fell on the young man and he was completely immobilized. Everyone put a cross on him. The girl came to us ten times, and I constantly refused her because of my employee. But at some point she managed to meet with me, I listened to her for a long time and changed my decision. As a result, we collected more than a million hryvnias in almost six months, and an absolutely incredible miracle happened - the guy got up and left.
But this, I repeat, is a very rare case when we go beyond the limits of our algorithms, which we have developed to select those whom we can help.
"THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS ROTTED TO THE FOUNDATION"
— It is clear that there are many people who need help. And the state helps very little. What should be changed in the country so that your fund is not so in demand?
— First of all, it is necessary to fundamentally change the healthcare system. Until we do this, nothing will change. This does not mean that all charitable foundations will disappear - they exist even in developed countries. But this is an incomparable story. No one collects syringes and oxygen concentrators there - this is a black hole that will be with us forever, until the healthcare system in Ukraine changes.
When it comes to the fact that periodically it is necessary to collect on the simplest, then there is no need to talk about system changes. There are improvements - for example, a fairly successful reform of the sphere of primary care, but this is a drop in the ocean.
In general, there are a million problems in this area. It is possible to recall such a moral and ethical problem, when many doctors themselves are holding back reforms, they do not want to be left with a feeding trough, and that our people are used to walking around and putting money in the pockets of doctors everywhere, that private medicine is currently comparable in cost to the so-called "free", guaranteed by article 49 of the Constitution of Ukraine... In general, the field of medicine has rotted almost completely, to the core.
- We talked about doctors. Do you have to meet such doctors in your work, who used to be called "magicians in white coats" or has the time of professionals gone forever?
— Of course, I know many absolutely fantastic doctors. But here too, it is necessary to make a distinction - a poor grandmother may be faced with a doctor who will say that he will not operate on her without a thousand or two dollars. But at the same time, he can be just a brilliant doctor... It is necessary to separate professional and human qualities here.
And of course, the pandemic showed, turned this whole situation inside out. We saw how many of our doctors simply bought diplomas, doctors who are used to sitting in the clinic, prescribing some unsubstantiated nonsense, who know how to "chop cabbage" and can't do anything else. The pandemic opened this abscess very badly.
— You talked a lot about the problems of medicine in Odessa and became a mortal enemy for many officials. At the same time, Last but not least, it was the "Monster Corporation" that saved the Odessa health care system from collapse in the first waves of the pandemic...
- Initially, our task was simple - to bring to the doctors what they needed to treat people. And of course, it never occurred to me that at some point we would find ourselves in their place - that we ourselves would have to go around the houses and connect patients to oxygen, that we would have to learn to work with oxygen concentrators, with CPAP devices for artificial respiration lung ventilation, read tests, look at pictures, understand doctors' appointments... I spent a colossal amount of time on this, a huge thank you to all the doctors who consulted me around the clock - so that I could conduct the initial triage of patients and understand who needs to be saved immediately , and who else can be kept and treated at home.
Then this terrible trash of 200-300 calls a day began - XNUMX/XNUMX "help", "save life", "look at the tests", even ambulances and hospitals began to send us. And then I argued very strongly with Maksym Stepanov, and with Kyiv, and with the city hall of Odessa, and I consider it my merit that I achieved the purchase of oxygen concentrators and the fact that they began to be given out to people at home. After all, before that, everyone told me that it was impossible... And then Kyiv even introduced the algorithm for dispensing concentrates at home into the treatment protocols. Therefore, in this case, we are proud of our merit, although the officials drank a lot of nerves and blood.
Or the situation with technical oxygen. For four months, we yelled at each other on different broadcasts, I asked, demanded, begged to use it, and they proved to us that it cannot be used when sick. 4-5 months passed, and they admitted that they were wrong, agreed, and now it is being used. But how many lives have we lost during this time due to their fault?
"WE MISSED A SECOND CHANCE FOR NORMAL SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT"
— What do you think was the reason for our country's complete unpreparedness for a pandemic at the global level? Is it a matter of bureaucracy, rigidity, banal stupidity or something else?
- In our country, everything is simply "maybe". "Maybe it will blow", and also - the habit of doing nothing, and professional unfitness, and corruption... It's so strange, because we were watching the neighboring countries, China, Italy, we had all the forecasts, and numbers, and dates; the pandemic in Ukraine did not start like a bolt out of the blue! In fact, the coronavirus came to us one of the last, we jumped on the last train, the country had a lot of time to prepare! And it absolutely killed me that they did not prepare, that they denied it, and even in the summer of 2020, when it was already clear that a big wave would begin in the fall, no one bought anything. I asked to install oxygen stations, they answered: why are they needed? And only then, I'll still give it my due, in 2021, a year and a half later, the system somehow got rolling and started working.
You know, returning to your question, in 2014, when all these events began, I had a hope that our society would suddenly wake up, that a turning point had come when everything would work out in the country... It didn't happen.
And when the pandemic came, I felt that this was the second chance for the country to follow a different path. If the war is “somewhere out there” for ordinary people, it is far away and has no direct relation to them, then the virus directly affected everyone. And I hoped that people would start helping each other, and at first there really was such an uplift - people drove doctors for free, fed them, thanked them. But all this ended exactly three months later, when people got used to the pandemic. In August 2020, I was driving through the city from the hospital - there our patients had a fight over the oxygen concentrator - and Odessa was walking, there were crowds of people, the Vyshivankovy festival, Independence Day. And here is this dissonance, when in hospitals patients are fighting for their lives, and here there are "gobblers", parades, music, and champagne is being poured - and I realized that we failed the humanity test for the second time.
"I WANT TO THINK IT WILL BE OVER SOON"
— Experts say with cautious optimism that the next wave of the coronavirus should be easier than the previous ones. And even despite the fact that the number of patients per day will break records, only a small percentage of them will lead to hospitalization and death. This is due to the coverage of the population by vaccination, and to the lesser danger of the Omicron strain. Is this point of view confirmed in the Odesa region, have there been fewer deaths, hospitalizations and seriously ill patients?
- Judging by the information I have, the Omicron strain, thank God, is actually less heavy than Delta. True, the fact that the most vulnerable categories of the population are vaccinated very little can play against us. But in the majority it passes easily, these are not oxygen-dependent patients, there are fewer hospitalizations, and deaths too.
The peculiarity of Omicron is that the patient becomes "severe" within a week - ten days, and since we have just entered this wave, somewhere in two weeks it will be clear how many people will be hospitalized. Conditionally, it can be assumed that the berths will be filled to about 50% of the autumn tide, and these figures will allow the system to cope, the collapse will not happen. But in November, the situation was simply terrible, we exceeded all possible norms. Additional mortality in November 2021 in our region was 89%, that is, almost twice as high. And the saddest thing is that most of these people could have been saved. After all, almost all hospitalized, severe and fatal cases are unvaccinated people. In addition, I repeat, the professional level of family doctors has surfaced. This is also a disaster - their appointments and recommendations were so incompetent that many patients quickly became "severe" and ended up in hospitals already in critical condition.
Separately, I want to say about vaccination. Now the whole world already has reliable facts and figures — vaccinated patients get sick easily, they rarely end up in hospitals, and there are very few fatal cases. And all fatal cases are patients with severe chronic diseases. Even in my work, I can say that 95% of our wards, which is more than five thousand people, are not vaccinated. Well, if you like to play roulette with your life, then fine.
And some people still buy vaccination certificates with a clear conscience! I confess that I also have acquaintances who bought themselves certificates - and after that they stopped being close people to me. This is humiliating, first of all, for ourselves. Well, doctors who sell fake documents are out of line.
It is difficult to say what will happen next. According to the forecasts of doctors, Omicron with its high contagiousness will lead to the fact that we will all get infected and get sick, but then it should disappear, and if some new strain does not appear, perhaps the pandemic may end by August.
On the other hand, I'm afraid that vaccination will become annual, like the flu shot, and there's no getting away from it. By the way, over the past two years, the coronavirus has practically displaced the flu from the population, and then, when the acute wave ends, the flu will return to us - and even stronger than before. In general, this is an endless process.
— It is rather strange that in the 21st century people have to be forced to vaccinate...
— It's all about people's lack of education. It feels like we have only the generation of "TikTok" left, users of superficial information. Some fool makes a video about how spoons stick to the body after vaccination, and it happened - 20 million views, likes, reposts, this is a nightmare.
You know, even five years ago, when some topics related to education were raised, I was indignant - they say, how can you do this when people are starving and dying all around. But time has passed and now I clearly understand that the only thing that needs to be done in our country is education. Otherwise, we will never get out of this hole. This is how we will endlessly help children in the burn unit who ended up there due to the lack of education of their parents, we will help coronavirus patients who stubbornly do not want to be vaccinated. I know one woman who has already buried both her mother and father because of Covid-XNUMX, but she came to us with pneumonia and told us that we were all "chipped".
— What are your future plans, speaking globally?
- I have such a vision - there is a war, we cannot lead the battle, but like nurses, we crawl across the battlefield, bandage and pull out those wounded who can still be saved - in the hope that someone will finally stop this battle. I still don't see the second path.
Interviewed by Elena Ovchinnikova
Photo: Sergey Lyashonok
