Day of medical victories

Research Institute of Children's Oncology gathered former patients

There is never enough government money to fight cancer and its social consequences, so the whole society must help people in trouble. Especially when it comes to children, because their diagnosis irreversibly changes the lives of entire families. This is well understood in the state corporation “Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs (Vnesheconombank)”, which last Saturday for the thirteenth time organized an extraordinary “Sunny Day” for former patients of the Research Institute of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology of the Russian Cancer Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences named after Blokhin.

This time the State Darwin Museum was chosen as the venue for the celebration of recovery, which two hundred kids were delighted with. They laughed and danced in circles. And then, spellbound, they looked at the huge screens, where various forms of life replaced each other in the process of evolution, dying in global cataclysms and certainly being reborn again.

Not only children look forward to this holiday every year. “Sunny Day” is a holiday of doctors and their professional victories. The fact is that at this seemingly ordinary matinee with clowns, dancing and prizes, they meet those whom they had recently seen on the “operating table and in the wards, afraid of injections.” The doctors recognize the parents, talk to them and take note of those who did not come this time. “We are so pleased to see you here healthy and happy,” repeated the chief physician of the Research Institute of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology of the Russian Oncology Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences named after Blokhin Lyudmila Valentein.

On Sunny Day, year after year, the children's oncology clinic receives gifts from its largest benefactors that help save children and hope for new miracles. So, last Saturday, the head of the public relations department of Vnesheconombank, Natalya Salmanova, gave Lyudmila Valentein a symbolic check for 2,995,025 rubles. for the purchase of the latest apparatus for endoscopic operations. “I remember how during perestroika our X-ray tube broke down - can you imagine oncology without X-rays? And then VEB showed up and bought us this tube,” Ms. Valentein recalled how her clinic’s acquaintance with the largest Russian bank began.

According to her, an oncological diagnosis is not a death sentence, especially when it comes to children. Modern medicine believes that 80% of young patients with modern and timely treatment are completely cured. But in practice, so much money is required for medications, operations, courses of radiation and chemotherapy, nursing and rehabilitation of a child after treatment that neither his parents nor state medicine are simply able to realize the chance of recovery.

Oncology is one of the most expensive pathologies, and even in the USA, Canada and Germany cannot afford to fight it solely with budgetary funds. Philanthropists play a huge role in the fight against cancer as a medical and social problem. “In Los Angeles, there are two virtually equivalent budgets for oncology - state and charitable,” Lyudmila Valentein told Vremya Novostei. “And thank God that our state is funding our medical field better and better, at least there are almost no problems with medicines,” noted the chief physician.

Let us recall that in 2009 Russia will begin implementing a new large-scale state program to help cancer patients and strengthen oncology services. As Minister of Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova recently stated, the decision to allocate additional funding in the amount of 28 billion rubles. (6.3 billion is expected to be spent already in 2009) was adopted at the government level, primarily in order to influence the sad mortality statistics in our country. It is no secret that malignant neoplasms are in second place after cardiovascular pathologies in the list of the main causes of death for Russians.

Galina PAPERNAYA