Articles and news about hematology department of Zaporozhye Regional Children's Hospital
How to make donations to the department
Children with leucosis and other blood diseases get treatment at the hematology department of Zaporizhzhya Regional Children's Hospital. Our children can have a chance to be treated if new effective methods of cancer treatment will be applied in our country, if our hospitals get modern medical equipment, if the whole society provides moral and financial support to the families with children suffering from cancer.
Unhappily not only adults can fall ill of cancer. Children also have these dreadful diseases – about 10-15 cases on the every 100 000 of children population.
Every year about 20 children become ill with blood cancer (acute myelogenous and lymphogenous leukemia) in our region. Brain cancer are on the second place. Brain tumors are followed by sarcoma, lymphoma and other types of tumors in the sickness rate. All these patients have chemotherapy and planned medical evaluations at the hematology department.
Fortunately children cancer is not a verdict taking into account a modern level of medicine. About 75% of children with cancer recover in the highly developed countries. Unhappily many Ukrainian children die from cancer but they could be saved if they were treated abroad.
So all of us - volunteers, different charity funds, doctors and the whole state - must do our best to achieve the level of developed countries in cancer treatment.
Another group of hematology department patients is the one consisted of children with nonneoplastic blood diseases. These are different types of anemia (including aplastic anemia), haemophilia and others.
Ten-year-old Andrey spent about a year at the hematology department
The treatment of blood diseases, especially cancer is a very difficult task both for doctors and patients. It lasts for months and even years causing different complications. Almost all types of cancer treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy, surgery operations and by combining of all these methods.
The complexity of the treatment of these diseases is that there are so much complications during it. When a child get high-dosed chemotherapy her/his immunity become weaker, as a result dysbacteriosis begins, different fungus and infections grow and affected an organism. In such cases doctors prescribe expensive antifungal medicines and stimulators of the leucocytes. Effective antifungal medicines costs about 800 dollars, the leucocytes stimulator preparations costs 120 – 200 dollars per one ampoule. Taking into account the modern aggressive protocols of the chemotherapy without this necessary support therapy many children can die not of the main disease but of the consequences of the chemotherapy.
Our state finance only medicines for standard chemotherapy. The support therapy preparation provides in the insufficient number. Also there is deficient of the state budget costs to provide our hospitals with such modern chemotherapy preparation as Mabtera (about 2100 dollar for 1 ampoule), Temodal (the main preparation in treating brain tumors).
We also have problems with visualization. Every child with cancer has to pass computer tomography (CT) and magnetic-resonance (MRI) imaging several times a year. Our regional children hospital has not its own apparatus MRI or CT so children pass their examinations at the commercial medical firms, the examination of one zone costs about 500-700 hryvnas (100-150 dollars)). Unfortunately Ukraine has not Positron emission tomography (PET) at all. The nearest PET apparatus is in Moscow.
In general Ukraine is very poor country in medical diagnostics and scientific investigations because our state invests less amount of money to this sphere. And it occurs that a problem of sick children is the problem of their parents and not indifferent people who can support the family with informational and financial help. Our doctors haven’t even access to the internet in their departments, so they have no possibility to study materials about world’s scientific investigations, they can’t read about experience of the world leading clinic's trials. That’s why we have so low level of medicine and that is why we have so high rate of children’s mortality.
Thus the treatment of any cancer disease in Zaporozhye region (as in Ukraine in general) costs minimum 2500-4000 dollars per year. Taking into account that the most patients of hematology department are children from poor country regions (as our Zaporozhye regional children's hospital treats the children from the whole Zaporozhye region) and most of them are from not complete families it is a great necessarity to provide this families with systematic help.
The sums for the treatment are so huge and incredible for ordinary Ukrainian family that parents of sick children can’t even get credit in banks for these purposes! That’s why we ask all not indifferent people to help us in our work. That’s why we ask to donate to accounts of sick children, that is why we ask to do what one can to help.
And another important direction of giving help to the hematology department patients is a blood-donating.
New year’s holiday for the patients of hematology department
Antifungal medicines and stimulators of the hemopoiesis (filgrastim, neupogen);
Modern medical equipment for different types of blood processing and keeping:
- The flatbed agitator to keep trombocytes in motion;
- A modular changing syringes infusion system Perfusor®B.Braun Space (2-3 items);
Computor or laptop;
We want to say as children with cancer are the most serious patients of our regional hospital the members of Fund "Happy Child" provide the hematology department with constant help. This week we have bought 3g-modem and provided the hematology department with high-speed internet connection. We have also ordered 1 syringing pump Perfusor®B.Braun Space for more effective infusion operations. Our fund constantly helps the most needy families to buy antifungal medicines and stimulators of the hemopoiesis for their children suffering from cancer. We also provide the children of this department with toys, books and DVD. As children with cancer spend monthes in their wards our volunteers visit them and give them lessons of art, painting. We also organize diferent holidays for these children, inviting actors and clowns to support little patients of hematology, to increase their mood and stimulate them to recover.
Our nearest plans for furute are to supply hematology department with one more modern computor or laptop for doctors and to set a special software (Enterprise resource planning (ERP), an enterprise-wide information system designed to coordinate all the resources, information, and activities) adapted for medical establishment. It is very important for making the doctor's work more effective and also for improvement of the work of department in particular and the hospital in general. We are also going to organize a special training course for department's stuff in order to teach them how to use computor and new programms.
And of course we are trying to attract attention of all Ukrainian community to this huge problem of the state of our medicine.
Ukraine, 69000, Zaporozhye, Lenin avenue, 70. Chief doctor - Andrey Borodin
HOW TO MAKE DONATIONS TO THE DEPARTMENT
