Zulpa Musostova was born in 1944. After finishing a medical training college, Zulpa worked for 18 months in the high mountain Shatoevsky region of Chechnya. Later she studied for six years at the Donetsk Medical Institute. On graduating, she worked as a doctor in the same Shatoevsky region. She practiced in many cities of the USSR, including Moscow and Leningrad. As a highly qualified neurologist, she now works in Grozny, helping the people of Chechnya who are in desperate need of medical care. She also organizes humanitarian projects to help the victims of the Russian-Chechen war.

In the destroyed city of Grozny, there is a quiet street with old houses that have suffered from Russian air raids, a street with people of different nationalities who did not have the chance to run away from the war to other regions of Russia. These are the lonely, the elderly, and the sick. Zulpa has become their advocate. She provides them with medical attention, along with moral and material support. Zulpa is a doctor, a top-notch professional, and an excellent diagnostician–one of the best in neuropathology. The war has changed the routine pace of life. Zulpa could have moved to some other city and worked under conditions of peace and stability, yet she has stayed here, at Polyclinic no.2. The city is deserted; there are ruins everywhere; transportation does not work; there is no electricity or water. Zulpa passes through this desolation daily on her way to work. The polyclinic is badly damaged. There is no door to her office, and instead of glass windows just a sheet of polyethylene; no cabinets for medicines, only chairs for the doctor and the patient. The war has not only harmed the physical well-being of the people, but has damaged their psychological state as well. Anxiety, fear, the horrors experienced, the death of loved ones, and the loss of belongings–all these factors explain why the number of Zulpa’s patients has skyrocketed. She does her best to help them, learning to cure diseases not common in peaceful times. She attends seminars, reads voraciously, and learns from her own experience. All this helps her to treat her patients as successfully as possible in conditions where medical equipment is desperately lacking. Thanks to Zulpa Musostova, hundreds of people have received qualified medical help both in and outside the city of Grozny.

Miezhdunarodnaya gumanitarnaya initsyativa (MGI)

Europe | Russian Federation