Credit crunch slashes survival chances of Ukraine' s children

Ukraine’s already under-funded healthcare service is buckling in the economic slump, forcing many hospitals to survive on charity and putting more lives at risk.

Ukraine is one of the countries taking the biggest hit from the financial crisis in Europe, with its economy shrinking 21% in the first quarter of 2009. The government has come to a virtual standstill, and political infighting is rife ahead of a presidential election.

Amid the chaos, the country's healthcare system is taking a battering, according to a report from a BBC correspondent in Kiev. "We've got nothing, not a kopek, not a dollar,” says Professor Yuri Orlov, the doctor in charge of a Kiev children's ward. Ukraine's most senior paediatric neurosurgeon said his budget for medicines this year is one quarter of what it was last year. He told the broadcaster: “There’s nothing for new equipment, for upkeep, or for buying the most elementary necessities."

Marco Zecchinato, who deals with young cancer patients for an Italian medical charity, Soleterre, said children with cancer in Ukraine are twice as likely to die as those in the rest of Europe. "In paediatric oncology, we have a rate of mortality that is double what it is in Europe or the US," he said. "40% are surviving, 60% are condemned to death."

Demand for Ukraine's main export, steel, has dropped dramatically since last summer and the national currency, the hryvnia, has lost more than a third of its value against the dollar. It means the government is not getting the revenues it expected.

But the squeeze also directly affects patients.

Officially, Ukraine has a system of universal free healthcare. But in practice, patients and their families have to pay for almost every aspect of medical treatment even down to buying their own bandages, syringes and other medication. To make the problem worse, imported medicines have in effect doubled in price because people's salaries are worth half what they used to be in foreign currency terms.

On the children's ward, nine-month-old Nastya is waiting for her operation. Her mother, Tanya, has no money to pay for things like blood transfusions or extra medicines. If there are complications, she says, she does not know what she is going to do.