Dr. Oksana Tereshchenko is the Director of AHF Ukraine’s Test and Treat Clinic in Odesa. Her story is next in our “I Am AHF” series featuring remarkable staff, clients, and partners who are doing what’s right to save lives everyday.
Interviewed by Diana Shpak, Knowledge Management Focal Point, AHF Europe.
The work of Dr. Oksana Tereshchenko, Director of the AHF Test & Treat clinic in Odesa, and her team during the war in Ukraine is deeply impressive in its dedication, humanity, and love for those who need support. Reading their story, we can recall the words of the famous Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka:
“No! I am alive! I will live forever!
I have in my heart something which never dies.”
These lines reflect resilience, inner light, and an eternal heart that does not fade, even in the darkest times. As a new AHF Test & Treat clinic opens in Kyiv, it is especially important for Dr. Oksana Tereshchenko to share her experience, where every client represents a relationship built on trust and daily responsibility.
“Since the beginning of the full-scale war, the AHF clinic in Odesa has not closed for a single day. We stayed, and we continue to stay,” says Dr. Oksana.
And for clients, this meant the most important point: they were not abandoned.
“The first days of the war were probably the hardest. No one understood what would happen next, how to react, or how to work in this new reality. Instead of the usual twenty clients, seventy could come for appointments,” Dr. Oksana recalls. “Those days are impossible to forget. Clients were asking for therapy as if they were asking for life itself, sometimes almost on their knees. Because of disruptions in logistics, there were not enough medicines. People were crying in the corridors, while the team worked without looking at the clock, without pauses, and without the right to give up.”
“The most painful thing was to see strong adult men asking for pills with tears in their eyes because they did not know whether they would have them tomorrow. This was what exhausted the team most, not only physically, but deep inside,” she added.
Oksana speaks with great gratitude about AHF’s support. The organization provided the clinic with generators, batteries, flashlights, and everything necessary to ensure that work would not stop.
“We feel this support, and we want to respond to it through our work,” she says.
Dr. Oksana also speaks with great gratitude about her team. In those days, everyone gave everything they had. Each person understood that behind every phone number there was not just a client, but a human being who needed not to get lost in the system and not to be left without treatment.
Then came new losses and new anxieties. Some clients joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine, many of them as volunteers. Contact with some of them was lost. There are still people the team cannot find. They stay in touch with relatives, wait for news, and continue to keep their finger on the pulse. And yet, the clinic endured. More than that, people began to return. At the beginning, the number of clients decreased from 800 to around 500, but later it started to grow again. Today, 1,087 clients are registered at the clinic. When clients call from abroad and ask whether they can return to the clinic, the answer is always: “Yes, of course, we are waiting for you.”
After the cold, blackouts, and constant pressure, the most difficult challenge remains the night shelling. People come to work exhausted, sometimes almost without sleep, but still open the doors of the clinic. There is no phrase here such as, “I will not come because I did not sleep all night,” because everyone knows that people are waiting for them, people for whom this clinic has become a pillar of support. And this daily resilience brings results: a large number of clients and around 98% adherence to treatment.
How did Dr. Oksana manage to keep the clinic running during the most difficult times while maintaining such strong results?
By education, she is an obstetrician-gynaecologist. Before moving to Odesa, she worked in a maternity hospital in the Kharkiv region. In 2004, already dreaming of a family and children, she moved to Odesa and chose a different professional path, working at the Regional AIDS Center. It was in Odesa that her journey in the field of HIV began: first through work with HIV-positive pregnant women, and later with all patients who needed treatment, support, and a truly human attitude.
Her story with AHF began in 2017, when she was selected for the new AHF clinic in Odesa and joined as a physician. The clinic started with around 300 clients, and as it developed, the team’s responsibility grew as well. In 2019, she was offered the position of Medical Director of the clinic. Dr. Oksana has always looked for new solutions and gradually helped the clinic grow from a small team of two doctors and one nurse into an incredibly strong team of 11 people.
She has known many of her clients for more than 20 years, so appointments often become not only conversations about health, but also about family, children, work, and life. Through these trusting conversations with clients, the team realized that people needed not only HIV care, but a family doctor and mental health support. This is how the idea of the Wellness Center was born, a space where people can receive not only medical care focusing on the prevention, testing, and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, but more holistic support. For many, the Wellness Center has become a place where they are remembered, known, welcomed, and where they feel at home.
The clinic team includes people with different experiences, sexual orientations, and HIV statuses. This diversity helps them better understand clients and support them at different stages of their journey. The team does not stop with what has already been achieved and is always open to new approaches. In 2019, the clinic became the first in the Odesa region to introduce oral PrEP. Since February, it has also been offering injectable PrEP, and now the team is preparing to introduce lenacapavir as another modern method of prevention.
Outside of work, Dr. Oksana tries to find time for herself. She studies English and dreams of going out on the water with a stand-up paddleboard at least once a week. Her great love is travel, especially together with her 20-year-old son, who lives in Germany. Their meetings become shared journeys to cities full of history, museums, and new discoveries. “If only I could see the Great Wall of China,” she dreams. Dr. Oksana speaks not only about work, but also about how the feeling of life in Ukraine has changed in recent years. Even before the full-scale war, she felt tension and fatigue in society. “It seemed to me that something had to happen,” she says.
Today, despite fear, pain, and loss, she sees a completely different energy: more openness, support, and warmth between people. For Dr. Oksana, these years have become a time of deep transformation, maturity, and a rethinking of what is truly important.
And despite the war and daily challenges, she says something simple and incredibly powerful:
“I am living through the best stage of my life.”
“Perhaps this is where everyone’s inner strength lies: not waiting for perfect conditions, but living now—working, loving, supporting, and staying close to people,” she says with a smile.
For her, development is a continuous process: growing as a doctor, as a director, and as a person. Dr. Oksana is convinced that a leader cannot stand apart from the team. True results are born where there is trust, connection, and a sense of shared purpose.
“Leadership is not about giving orders. It is about energy, example, and the ability to inspire, so that every person in the team feels their own voice and connection to the clinic’s development. That is why our team does not work as a set of separate positions, but as one living organism, carrying AHF’s mission with great gratitude, dedication, and faith in people,” she says.
