In Khabarovsk Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited an unusual cardio-vascular centre: it's new and has everything it needs.
Having flown from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Khabarovsk, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited yesterday a federal centre of cardio-vascular surgery.
Kommersant special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov saw the only Russian instrument – ultraviolet irradiator – in the paediatric intensive care unit. Others were of foreign make.
It would be no exaggeration to say that the centre is excellent: 128 highly qualified doctors, a well-equipped paediatric unit, and so on. This is how it should be in a civilised country rather than in the village of Tiksi, which Mr Putin visited briefly three days ago.
Chief Doctor Ruslan Netbaya told Mr Putin that the centre, which is the best in the city, will open on September 1. Unfortunately, there is no perinatal centre of the same calibre in the city.
Everything has been done with respect and love for the patients. Three beautiful paintings hang on the walls by the entrance. One of them depicts a mother dressed in antique clothes carrying her naked child out of a fire. I thought it was too much for the reception of the children's intensive care unit; some people may even think they walked into the wrong building.
Another painting showed a nurse on holiday in Sochi. I don't know why I got this impression. Judging by her tan, her holiday was coming to an end and judging by her face she seemed reluctant to admit this even to herself.
I wondered for some time what had given me such a strange association. After all, this was an artistic interpretation of reality.
I even stopped a young woman dressed in a white robe and asked her whether she knew who had painted the pictures.
"Alexei Khvan," she replied.
It dawned on me that the young woman I mistook for a nurse was the model for the painting. She turned out to be a doctor. Khvan was her friend and it is because of her that the paintings had been chosen for the centre.
But this was not the only surprise. I was genuinely impressed by the intensive care unit for children. Its head Vitaly Pyatko said most of their equipment was of foreign make: "The ventilators are Swedish, burs and defibrillators are German and syringes Lithuanian, but the ultraviolet irradiator is Russian."
He proudly pointed to the irradiator: "And it even works. Can you hear it?"
"I hear it better than see it work," I replied.
At the entrance Andrei Vitko, the minister of education of the Khabarovsk Territory, showed the prime minister stands with the photos of the premises that he was going to visit in a moment.
Addressing Mr Putin, he said: "Now let's go to the intensive care unit." The prime minister shuddered, looked at him and headed for the unit. It seemed to me that he was walking a bit less steadily.
Mr Putin showered a young cardio surgeon Dmitry Nekrasov with questions. He wanted to know why the doctor considered the centre to be so good.
"This centre is very unusual for this country," Nekrasov replied.
"Why is it unusual?" Mr Putin queried.
"Because everything in this centre is new and it has everything it needs," Nekrasov said.