The head of the first Hospice in Russia died

In Moscow, at the age of 69, the head of the first Moscow hospice Vera Millionshchikova died. “She had been sick for a long time, but felt good. Today she died in the presence of her relatives from vast thromboembolism,” the President of the Vera Hospice Fund, Anna Federmeser, the President of the Hospice Help Fund, told RIA Novosti.

Millionshchikova became the discoverer of the hospice movement in Russia, opening 16 years ago the first Moscow hospice, where hopeless cancer patients receive help and departure. In the early nineties, as an oncologist, Millionshchikova worked at the Institute of X-rayradiology. Her acquaintances said that she came to visit the dying patients home.

Soon Millionshchikova met with the English journalist Viktor Zors, who opened the first Russian hospice in St. Petersburg. In 1993, Millionshchikova was able to get permission from officials to open the first hospice in Moscow.

In Moscow, 23 thousand people die from cancer every year, and about 250 thousand people need hospice assistance annually. Now in the capital there are eight hospice, who are enough for cancer patients of the IV clinical group, but hospice are needed by patients who have undergone severe strokes or in a deep coma, childhood disabled people, AIDS and patients with other incurable progressive diseases.