Children with mental disorders who require inpatient care in Ukraine should be treated in regional or city children’s hospitals, rather than in general psychiatric facilities, said Yevhen Gonchar, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Health, in an exclusive interview with the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
According to him, the legislation was amended after cases were uncovered in which children from residential care facilities were referred to psychiatric hospitals—in particular, under the guise of treatment or rehabilitation, or in fact to influence their behavior.
Such cases were documented in reports by the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights and law enforcement agencies.
Gonchar emphasized that a psychiatric hospital should not be used as a tool for correcting a child’s behavior.
Adult patients with dementia who have been in psychiatric facilities for a long time, primarily for social rather than medical reasons, remain a separate issue.
Stable patients with dementia who do not require treatment for acute episodes, according to the deputy minister, should receive social care—specifically in supported living facilities or other specialized institutions—rather than permanently occupying beds in psychiatric hospitals.
In the first half of 2026, 8,352 thousand births were registered in Kyiv—about 11% of the total number of newborns in Ukraine.
Lviv Oblast took second place, with 6,617 thousand children born. Next were Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with 5,611 thousand newborns and Odesa Oblast with 5,450 thousand.
At the same time, the birth rate declined not only in frontline regions but also in relatively safe regions. In the Vinnytsia, Lviv, and Ternopil regions, the number of births decreased by approximately 20% compared to the first half of 2025.
The sharpest decline was recorded in the Donetsk region, where the number of newborns fell by about three times. In the Zaporizhzhia region, the figure dropped by 23%.
In total, 73,292 births were registered in Ukraine from January through June 2026, which is 16% fewer than a year earlier, OpenDataBot reported on July 22, citing data from the Ministry of Justice.
