Vladimir Putin tours a cancer hospital under construction
Thousands of young patients whose diagnoses sounded like death sentences may soon get a second chance to enjoy life. On June 1, 2011 the Federal Clinical and Research Centre for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Immunology is to open in Moscow. It will be able to treat 400 patients at a time and carry out rare and complex operations like bone marrow transplantation. This cutting-edge, high-tech hospital, the largest in Europe and unparalleled in Russia in terms of equipment installed, even has an air factory of its own. Vladimir Putin inspected the construction yesterday.
This wasn't a usual working trip for the prime minister. Then-president Vladimir Putin first visited the Russian Children's Hospital in 2005. Seeing for himself the conditions in which children were being treated, Putin decided that a new centre would be built and become the biggest and best equipped in Europe. Many people remember the footage of Putin talking to Dima Rogachyov, a boy suffering from leukemia complicated by hepatitis B and C. After two years, the boy died at a hospital in Israel...
The construction of the centre began in August 2008 and has been carried out by a German company. A seven-storey building with colourful windows that bears a closer resemblance to a Lego construction than a hospital is already looking out over Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow's southwest district.
"It's difficult to imagine that only two years ago, there was nothing in this place," said Galina Novichkova, the centre's deputy director for clinical activities and head doctor.
She began the tour from the seventh floor, the technical one.
"This is what every hospital should begin with nowadays," she said, pointing to a hall full of equipment resembling washing machines with air funnels attached. "This is an air factory. It processes and feeds 360,000 cubic meters of air per hour into the hospital. Ten-step cleaning to complete sterility is used for surgical operating rooms and intensive care units. Six-step cleaning is used for usual wards."
"Any infectious complications can be lethal for patients. This is why even the cleanest air, let alone that of Moscow, is unsuitable for cancer patients," Galina Novichkova explained, adding that this is the first facility of its kind in Russia.
To get into a surgical operating room, one needs to go through two cleaning chambers. "You see, the walls are painted cream to make it feel cozy," she continued. One feels uncomfortable when hears the word 'cozy' and sees the adjustable surgical table in the room's centre. However, the head doctor explained that the building and the interiors were designed to make sure that despair never finds too warm a welcome.
As expected, the doctors will be giving hope to thousands of children from all across Russia who suffer from lethal blood diseases, malignant tumours, and inherent immune dysfunctions. The centre's deputy director Alexei Maschan told Vladimir Putin that "besides surgical operations, the centre will be carrying out all types of research, including molecular genetics analysis with state-of-the-art nuclear diagnostics methods." "We will pursue cell therapy by teaching cells in the immune system to fight tumours and viruses themselves," he said.
The centre will also be executing bone marrow transplantations, the treatment that is in greatest demand. Currently, about 150 children undergo this surgery every year, but it is necessary for thousands. "We have an issue. The new Customs Union regulations hold that bone marrow is a commodity and must be assigned a monetary value. But it is priceless. Stem cells die 24 hours after removed from the body of a donor," Galina Novichkova complained about the imperfection of customs law. "I'm sure that there will be no problems here and that the materials will be delivered on time," the prime minister replied. Putin has repeatedly pointed out that the rules of the Customs Union will take a long time to be streamlined.
But once you start complaining, make the most of it. The centre's director Alexander Rumyantsev told the prime minister that the hospital badly needed a cyclotron, a device that produces biomarkers. These are infused into the patient's blood and mark cancer cells. "How much does it cost?" Vladimir Putin asked. "About 40 million roubles," the doctors replied. "A little over a million dollars," the prime minister said thoughtfully, while the doctors explained to him that this price does not include transportation and customs clearance. "I understand – two million dollars all in all," he smiled, jotting a note in his book.
"What about our neighbour, the Lukoil filling station?" Alexander Rumyantsev asked. The centre overlooks this filling station. "They are decent people. They will understand the problem," Vladimir Putin assured him, making another note.
At the end of his tour, Vladimir Putin asked the doctors how much housing would be needed for foreign specialists, doctors from other Russian regions, and those who had once left Russia to work abroad and were willing to come back to work at the centre. They say there are such specialists. The prime minister promised to see to the housing issue.
To have a hand in the centre's landscaping, Vladimir Putin took a shovel and planted a fir tree in the hospital's yard.
Yulia Shestopyorova