"Rossiiskaya Gazeta": "Treating patients in a new way"
Vladimir Putin visits one of Russia's oldest orthopedic centres.
After spending several days in St Petersburg, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the town of Pushkin, which hosts the Turner Children's Orthopedic Research Institute, the only centre of its kind in Russia.
Putin's visit to the institute was timed to coincide with the opening of its new building. Accompanied by Healthcare and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova and St Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, Putin visited the operation rooms, cabinets of magneto-resonance imaging (MRI), the intensive care unit and even a gym.
The institute's Director Alexei Baindurashvili acted as their guide. In the MRI office, Putin was shown how this technology allows doctors to immediately determine what has been injured or what is wrong with a child. The screen showed an image of a boy's spinal cord after a car crash.
"If he's not operated on right away, he'll be incapacitated," Baindurashvili said. Putin was shown the latest equipment, a unique open MRI unit. A regular MRI unit consists of a closed pipe, where many children feel claustrophobic. And understandably so - they have to lie there motionless for 20 minutes. The new unit allows children to watch TV.
In the intensive care unit, Putin asked: "What kind of salaries do the doctors get?"
"They receive at least 26,000 roubles, while those who make complicated operations can get 70,000-80,000 roubles," Baindurashvili answered.
The new building's construction took almost three years and cost 1,382.4 million roubles from the federal budget. It is fitted out with all the latest foreign-made equipment. High precision equipment makes it possible to develop new directions in orthopedics, particularly neonatal orthopedics for diagnosing and correcting pathology in newborns. The institute plans to develop prenatal diagnostics and early treatment.
The operating ward has nine operating rooms: eight regular ones and one equipped with an X-ray, which makes it possible to watch the operation on a screen while it is being carried out. This technology is simply irreplaceable in prosthetics. The institute was short of operating tables - the old building only has five. In the meantime, the institute conducts 2,500 operations a year, plus the ministry's quota. This year, it carried out 400 operations. Doctors will find it much easier to work now.
Patients suffering from diseases of the musculoskeletal system have been treated in the children's institute for more than 100 years. At first, there were only 20 beds. Now there are 440, and there will be another 200 beds in the new building, said the institute's deputy director Daniil Makhlin. Children from all over Russia and even other CIS countries come to the institute. Doctors recently had to work weekends to cope with the huge inflow of patients.
Accommodation for parents accompanying their children is still an urgent problem. Mothers of toddlers stay with them in a ward, but parents of teenagers often have to stay in hotels, which is certainly not cheap. Since it often takes a child a long time to recover after the operation, the institute offers a school with 50 teachers to prevent children from lagging behind their peers. Convalescent children occupy expensive beds, whereas sick kids wait in a queue. The institute's director has requested permission to accommodate convalescent children in the Yuny Vodnik federal sanatorium. Makhlin said that a decision on this matter is about to be made at the highest level.
After inspecting the new building, Vladimir Putin made his way to the old one. He cheered the children up with toys and the institute up with an electric piano.
