Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Nurses and patients at the town hospital in Chernivstsi, Ukraine, came together in an unusual task today: making their own protective masks.

“We bought gauze, people sat down and stitched the masks for the doctors,” said Oleh Kaminskyi, a doctor who works at the hospital. “Now we’re washing and ironing them.”

Ukraine, battling an outbreak of respiratory disease that’s sickened 478,400 people and killed 81, is struggling with a lack of protective equipment, antiviral drugs and laboratory facilities to confirm whether the H1N1 pandemic virus is causing the disease. Many residents are staying at home and turning to natural remedies such as garlic to ward off the virus.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said in an urgent address to the nation today that the country’s flu outbreak is “unique” because three flu strains are spreading at the same time. That increases the risk of mutations of the viruses into a new strain, he said, citing unnamed domestic and foreign experts. The World Health Organization sent a team of scientists and advisers to Ukraine this week to investigate the outbreak.

The country’s Council for National Security and Defense is taking over management of the epidemic now, Yushchenko said, adding that the government has failed to control the spread of illness from the western Ternopil region.

‘Scared’

“Everyone is scared,” said Hryhoriy Stasiv, chief medical doctor at a division of Lviv’s First Clinical Hospital, in a telephone interview. “We don’t have masks. We don’t have medicines. We see on TV that drugs are on the way, but it’s been a while and they’re still not here.”

Ukraine, an eastern European nation with 46 million people that borders the European Union, has asked the U.S., the EU, NATO and neighbors for anti-flu drugs. Poland and Slovakia sent protective masks and Roche Holding AG’s drug Tamiflu after Yushchenko said the country couldn’t fight an outbreak of pandemic influenza alone.

Tamiflu has arrived at the hospital in Lviv, near the Polish border, though the medicine can only be used for severe cases of people confirmed to have H1N1, or swine flu, said Natalya Pohmurska, a doctor who works there. Because the local laboratory is closed, samples have to be shipped to Kiev, and take three days to return with a result, Pohmurska said.

Garlic and Honey

“I tell my patients to eat garlic, honey, herbal tea, cabbage and take lots of vitamins,” she said. “We lack masks. We got six for the week. Although they’re supposed to be used once, we wash them and iron them to be able to re-use them.”

Ukraine’s government closed schools and banned public events on Oct. 30. In Kiev, the capital, people wear masks on the streets, pharmacies hang handwritten signs that read “no masks for sale” and theaters are shut. The Health Ministry today said the death toll rose to 81, up from an estimated 71 yesterday, according to a statement on its Web site.

The hospital in Kamyanets-Podilskyi, in southwestern Ukraine, sent home patients scheduled for non-urgent surgery and turned units devoted to drug and alcohol addiction into wards for flu patients, said Tetyana Ocheretenko, a local doctor.

“We weren’t ready for this outbreak,” said Kaminskyi, the doctor from Chernivstsi.

Ukraine’s 2009 state budget devoted 10 times less money to combating epidemic outbreaks than in the previous year. The money allocated to epidemics was 500,000 hryvnia ($60,423), down from 5 million hryvnia a year ago, according to the Web site of the Ukrainian parliament.

Flu Pandemic

The WHO declared the first influenza pandemic since 1968 on June 11 after raising its alert level three times. A pandemic means a new flu strain is sweeping across the globe. Seasonal flu kills as many as 500,000 people a year worldwide, according to the Geneva-based United Nations health agency.

Laboratory tests in Kiev confirmed swine flu in 17 samples taken from patients, First Deputy Health Ministry Vasyl Lazoryshynets said yesterday. The WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza Samples in London received samples sent by the Ministry of Health in Ukraine, the United Nations health agency said. The laboratory will conduct confirmatory tests.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net; Halia Pavliva in Kiev at hpavliva@bloomberg.net; Kateryna Choursina in Kiev at kchoursina@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 4, 2009 12:12 EST