Rehabilitation centres built to a standard that did not exist here before

The first phase was improvisation: whatever capacity existed, used to its limit. By 2023 something more deliberate was being built.

New rehabilitation centres opened, designed around an integrated model rather than assembled from separate departments: reconstructive surgery, prosthetic fitting and manufacture, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and psychological support in one place, with the same team following a patient through all of it.

What partners provided

Capital funding and equipment, and — more valuable in the long run — clinical partnerships. Ukrainian surgeons, prosthetists and therapists trained with specialist centres abroad and brought the protocols home. Foreign specialists came to operate and teach. Charitable foundations, diaspora organisations and private donors financed a substantial share.

The design intention was explicit and it deserves noting: to build permanent national capacity rather than a temporary wartime service. A prosthetics workshop and a trained team do not become useless when a war ends. They become part of a health system that a country will need for the next fifty years.