CRISIS HITS POCKETS - AND KIDNEYS...

"We have always had financial problems, but never as bad as now. The crisis has already done away with 20-30% of budget subsidies and no one is talking about additional financing. In other words, we will have to rely on our resources. And we have none whatsoever. Our hospital is high on the expense sheet: bullet wounds, poisoning, attempted suicides, and accidents. Every month we need literally truckloads of transfusion blood and saline solution, along with about a million disposable syringes  and 11  km of surgical gauze. Treating a single bad injury costs Hr 260 per 24 hours. Now how am I supposed to make it cheaper? Stop treating or serving meals? And there are sophisticated cases when the costs rise a hundred times..."

This patient's name is Oleh Karlov and his ward has long turned into his home. An awkward jump in the water ended in a fractured spinal column. Complete paralysis. Two years in an iron lung that can be turned off for 20-30 min. only. Yuri Mayorov, his attending physician, considers his patient a unique case in world medicine. Usually, people with such injuries die in a month. Oleh hopes to live to see the day when medicine learns to cure  his case. The iron lung he is using is outdated and emits a hum so loud Oleh can hardly make himself heard or hear others. He sometimes asks to muffle his ears with pillows. There is more modern equipment, but it costs $20,000-40,000. And of course, the hospital cannot afford it. Oleh receives Hr 37 in monthly pensions and his mother had to quit work so she could stay by his side. She has three children besides Oleh and her husband has to support the family. The other day word spread that the municipal authorities were going to give the hospital a present: a shipment of new "Faza-8" iron lungs of domestic manufacture. The Karlovs were ecstatic: these new machines were designed  to develop disease-stricken lungs and help the patient breathe on his own. The hospital received ten of them and the number of patients needing them was far larger. "You see, if Oleh were to be allocated one of the machines it would mean that no one else would be able to use it," Yuri Mayorov explains sadly, "because he cannot stay off artificial breathing for more than half an hour. Of course, I think that my patient should be given one of the new machines, considering that he is a unique case, but..."

I saw seven patients in the intensive care unit, among them a girl beaten half to death in an elevator and a man after a stroke. They told me that there were times when IC had to accommodate a dozen. Now try to judge who needs the new iron lungs more. Nataliya Isayenko in charge of IC quickly stepped from one bed to the next. The hospital was heavily understaffed and not all still on payroll could endure the daily and nightly rush. At times one could not find a couple of minutes to have a cup of tea in 12 hours. Physicians came to work here after years of study and practice and now the Cabinet has resolved to dismiss every 20th specialist on the Kyiv Ambulance Hospital staff.

Experts predict that ambulance calls will shortly increase 1.5-2 times as any crisis is accompanied by the sharpening of old ills and a jump in the suicide and epidemic rate. From now on Kyivites dialing 02 will have to wait even longer than usual: the ambulance service is being switched to an "abridged program" following personnel and financial reductions.