Russia children hospital to stay open
2013-01-23 21:19
St Petersburg - Russian authorities on Wednesday promised
not to close the main hospital treating children with cancer in the country's
second city and hand it over for the exclusive use of senior judges, in an
apparent U-turn following a public outcry.
"The hospital is operating and will operate as
usual. Period." Andrei Kibitov, the spokesperson of St Petersburg's Governor
Georgy Poltavchenko, wrote on his Twitter account.
"Everything will be as usual, there will not be any
move."
The public had reacted angrily to a plan to hand over
hospital No 31, which has St Petersburg's biggest children's cancer unit, and
use it exclusively to treat senior judges who are set to relocate to the city.
The Kremlin confirmed on Wednesday that the plan would
not go ahead.
"City hospital No 31 is not being considered as a
possible venue for a future medical centre to serve the judges and staff of the
Supreme and Higher Arbitration Court," a spokesperson for the presidential
administration, Viktor Khrekov, told Russian news agencies.
In a suggestion that public opinion played a role,
Khrekov acknowledged that the presidential administration had received a host
of inquiries over the hospital's fate from national and regional lawmakers and
city residents.
More than 150 000 people signed an online petition and
Russian stars including actress Chulpan Khamatova and rock singer Andrei
Makarevich appealed to President Vladimir Putin in an open letter over the
decision.
There are at least three children's cancer wards in St
Petersburg but the one at hospital No 31 is the biggest, a spokesperson for the
hospital told AFP.
The head of the hospital's children's department,
Margarita Belogurova, had warned that a move would "destroy unique ways of
caring for the children".
Protesters have arranged to hold a rally in the city
centre on Wednesday evening, with permission for up to 10 000 people.
Closure ‘morally unacceptable’
The Russian Orthodox Church also hit out at the proposed
closure in an unusual statement, warning judges it would be "morally
unacceptable" to cause suffering to children with cancer.
The influential speaker of Russia's upper house of
parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, who was St Petersburg's long-term governor,
slammed the proposal late on Tuesday, saying that "I consider it
unacceptable to take this hospital out of the city's health system”.
"I well understand the feelings of people who are
worried about the fate of this hospital. You mustn't solve one problem by
creating another," she told journalists, quoted by Interfax.
The city authorities initially appeared taken aback by
the public outrage at the proposal, trying to calm the protest mood by
announcing a tentative plan to open a specialist children's cancer hospital in
St Petersburg.
The proposal to close Hospital No 31 came up as part of
ambitious plans to transfer Russia's Supreme Court and Higher Arbitration Court
from Moscow to the Tsarist-era capital, a move involving thousands of staff.
In a Soviet throwback, government ministries and state
agencies still commonly have state hospitals assigned to treat their staff -
without granting free access to the general public. Their facilities are seen
as better-than-average.
Hospital No 31 is a modern building dating back to the
1970s and has highly specialised modern cancer treatment equipment bought with
funds including million-dollar charity donations.
In the Soviet era, it served party officials.
