That’s How We’ll Win!

10 April 2020

Students of Russian universities have joined the nationwide fight against the pandemic.

Today, everybody can choose between staying at home to join the lockdown or moving to the front lines like RUDN University volunteers – postgraduates, fellows and medical students – who help the Kommunarka Infections Diseases Hospital staff provide treatment to coronavirus patients. The students are doing “red zone” work. Of course, they wear protective gear and have been briefed on staying safe, but it really takes a lot of courage to be in the thick of the COVID-19 outbreak helping to save lives.

In Russia’s Far East, FEFU medical students volunteered to help children’s outpatient clinics, rehabilitation centres and hospitals. Their input to ease the increasingly heavy workload on staff doctors is truly invaluable. FEFU School of Medicine residency students help run health checks on their classmates who came from COVID-19 affected countries.

SPbPU students care for the elderly who are currently in self-isolation: they buy food and medications and deliver them to their doorstep in St Petersburg and townships and villages outside the city.

The universities materials and equipment that were committed to science in pre-crisis time are now converted to operation for medical needs. The FEFU Project Centre launched the production of face mask parts using 3D printers. The UrFU Radiation Sterilisation Centre works two shifts to disinfect disposable medical instruments. The KFU Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology is focused on developing a coronavirus vaccine. The Sechenov University Clinical Centre has prepared 2,000 places for COVID-19 patients.