WYTHEVILLE — Wendy Welch is amazed that a health professions training program led to a medical survival guide for Ukrainians isolated by the Russian army.
Welch, executive director of the Southwest Virginia Graduate Medical Education Consortium, has helped oversee a program since last year to bring together medical and health professions students with the Inman Village community in Appalachia.
The program has two purposes: to educate residents about available nutrition and health care services and to teach students to realize that a community’s health is often dictated less by personal choice and more by what services and food sources are available.
From that effort, Welch said recent cooperation with Lincoln Memorial University’s DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine became the spark for an 18-page Google Docs guide to herbal and pharmacological sources for nutrition and medical care.
Welch said DeBusk students were preparing to come to Inman on regular visits to help GMEC with monthly education and community support visits. Mary Beth Bobas, an herbalist and nutritionist with DeBusk, visited Inman recently with Welch and Tori Mackal, faculty advisor with UVA Wise’s Health Pre-professional Club to get more familiar with the program.
“We were walking in the woods behind Inman and MB started picking out all of these edible and/or medicinal plants all through the woods,” Welch said. “She pointed out that you can’t gather those kinds of plants where pesticides are used, but the area behind Inman was perfect to find and use wild plants.”
While the Ukraine situation had not grown to war at that time, Welch said she wondered how Bobas’ knowledge could be used to help Inman’s residents.
“MB said, ‘I’m a nutritionist. You’re an anthropologist. You figure it out,’ ” Welch said, laughing.
That walk in the woods led to GMEC working with UVA Wise plant biologist Ryan Huish on ways to educate Inman residents about the resources in their backyard. Welch said Inman was not the end of that effort.
“There is an informal group of child advocates and parents in the region that for years has brought older, abandoned and orphaned children from Ukraine to their homes for Christmas,” Welch said. “Many of the children have medical, emotional and physical needs, and the group gets them needed care while they’re in the US They also spoil them, filling their suitcases with useful Christmas gifts before they head back to Ukraine after the holiday season. ”
Welch said the advocates stay in contact with the children while they are back in Ukraine, helping find adoptive parents and continuing care. A prolific knitter, Welch has made several blankets and other pieces for the children.
“We had two boys who absolutely loved everything Spider-Man,” Welch said. “We knitted them each Spider-Man blankets, and I saw them on the news being evacuated during the invasion. They were wrapped in those blankets.”
Two teenagers, Diana and Slav, have seen their lives upended by the Russian invasion, Welch said. While one advocate was able to help Diana get a visa to get to Switzerland, Slav — his real name is being withheld in case Russian forces might see it in media and target him — is still in the defeated southern city of Mariupol.
“Slav can’t get out of Ukraine because he is of age for military service,” Welch said. “We’ve been in contact with him and he’s suffering from a facial infection with sores. We’ve asked what medicines or substances are on hand, and we were told vodka and black tea.”
Welch said that started several herbalists and pharmacists coordinating with other GMEC contacts and the advocacy group to figure out what else might be available to help Slav and others isolated in the invasion.
“There’s best practices and there’s survival,” Welch said. “We figured that many homes over there had spice racks, and the herbalists and pharmacists started from there. Almost every spice rack has turmeric, which pharmacists will tell you has a variety of uses. We also learned that steamed nettles are like spinach and can help with nutrition.”
In Slav’s case, the team was able to tell him how to control his infection and treat the sores, Welch said.
Some of the teens the advocates had been helping were pregnant, Welch said, and nettles are not safe to eat during pregnancy.
“You can steep steamed nettles in vodka for a couple of weeks, though,” said Welch, “and after a woman has given birth, you can give them 15 to drops of that in a glass of water and that gives them needed post- natural vitamins.”
As the group began researching other plants that Ukrainians could use, they began learning applied botany across different parts of the country, Welch said. Researchers found notes from a Romanian herbalist group that gave them region-specific information on useful plants across the country.
“Chickweed grows in a lot of places there,” said Welch, “and you can chew it, spit it in your hands and apply it to wounds to help prevent infection.”
From that point, Welch said, group members found themselves doing fast translations from Romanian to English to Ukrainian to compile the 18-page guide.
“We compiled information on dandelions, violets, mushrooms and herbs,” Welch said. “With this being a Google Doc, we still have the ability to get information to people there. When power comes on during the day, people charge their cell phones, and they can download and store the information on their phones.”
Welch said the advocacy group’s leader, who preferred to be identified only as Misty, had contacted Slav Friday on how to treat fever from his infection.
“Misty is currently explaining to Slav how to make garlic paste with mustard and put that on his feet to break the fever,” Welch said. “If they get an onion, they should cut the top off and rub that on his feet and eat the rest.”
Welch said she never expected a once-a-month nutrition and medical education program in Wise County to spawn a wartime survival guide.
It was the strangest thing, compiling and translating all this into Ukrainian,” said Welch. “While people using this knowledge may still feel hunger, they will not suffer from malnutrition. We’re in this for the long haul.”
