Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine will provide $40m to fight oncology diseases in Ukraine.

As UNIAN reporter informs, this information was announced by Rinat Akhmetov, President of Foundation for Development of Ukraine at the presentation of new project “Cancer Can Be Cured. Timely Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment”.

“Ukraine has registered 910,267 people with cancer. Every year adds another 160,000, with 90,000 dying of the disease”, - R. Akhmetov noted. He believes the reason for that is a limited technical capacity of the Ukrainian medicine.

“Cancer morbidity in Europe and the USA is higher compared to Ukraine, while the mortality is lower. Why? Because they invest much in early diagnostics and effective treatment”, said the President of Foundation for Development of Ukraine.

R. Akhmetov is confident that by providing $40m to fight cancer he will better the situation with early detection in Ukraine and thus save a lot of people’s lives.

$20m will be allocated on Donbass region, $10m on the National Institute of Cancer, while another $10m will be spent to fight cancer in Western Ukraine”, specified R. Akhmetov.

 
Answering the question why such a big amount of money is provided to fight oncology diseases, R. Akhmetov stressed: “When I heard before that a person had cancer, I thought it was hopeless. But if the first cancer phase can be cured in 90-100%, the second – in 70-80%, and third – in 30-35%. Our task is to invest money in early diagnostics”.

Tatyana Bakhteyeva, Head of the Committee on Public Health at Verkhovna Rada, noted that Ukraine has never seen such a high-tech equipment to be bought by Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation for Development of Ukraine.

“It includes two PET facilities (positron emission tomography – corr.), one of them will be installed in the National Institute of Cancer (Kiev) and used to treat citizens from all regions of Ukraine free of charge, while another PET facility will be installed in Donbass region for people from Southern and Eastern part of Ukraine”, said T. Bakhteyeva.

According to her, a cyber knife for the Donetsk TB Dispensary will be bought to help perform treatment without operations. MRT (magnetic resonance tomography) facilities, computerized tomographic system and linear accelerator will be bought for Western part of Ukraine, which lacks this equipment.

T. Bakhteyeva underlined that PET is a golden standard for treatment of oncology diseases all over the globe.

“For instance, the USA has 2,000 PETs, Europe operates around 800 of them, and there are 15 in Moscow. Ukraine does not have any PET facility”, she noted.

Professor and Director of the National Institute of Cancer Igor Shchepotin thanked Rinat Akhmetov for his charity and emphasized that “with this equipment we will actually be able to improve the situation with oncology diseases in Ukraine over a short period of time”

Referring to statistics he noted that “morbidity and mortality in our country are at highest level in Europe, survival rates are 2.5 times worse than in other countries”.

I.Shchepotin believes that “we are lagging not because surgical treatment quality is lower but because our material and technical base can’t ensure required modern aid”. He is sure that positive results will be evident in 1.5 years after installation of the very latest medical equipment.

 
Answering the question of journalists regarding the time of purchase and commission of the equipment, R. Akhmetov said: “I would love the budget to be spent as soon as tomorrow. I would give $50m if the equipment could save people’s lives as soon as tomorrow”.

In turn, I. Shchepotin noted the situation was unusual for him as the head of a medical institute.

“So far I have been only in situations when I had to go to governmental instances and wring money. Now we have entirely different relations. They wring from us to make it faster”, noted Director of the National Institute of Cancer.

He informed they had negotiated with developers and suppliers. “Our prior calculations show that we will be able to accept first patients in a year”, said I. Shchepotin.

Source UNIAN-Zdorovye
Published on: 10 July, 2008 18:07 p.m.