If Kristina were a Russian citizen, she would be entitled to health care funds, authorities’ help and the Russian health care system in general. But she is foreign and has to pay for everything.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Disease without Citizenship
// A girl from Kazakhstan needs help in Russia
12-year-old Kristina has osteosarcoma of the right thigh-bone – cancer cells are grinding and destroying the bone. The girl can be saved with a surgery that would replace the diseased bone with a German-made prosthesis. This is very expensive, but Kristina has no one to turn to, even authorities since she is not a Russian citizen. Her mother took her to Moscow from Kazakhstan. The girl cannot possibly wait till sluggish officials decide to pay attention to her. She cannot wait by life-saving indication.
At the children’s clinic of the Moscow-based Blokhin Cancer Center everyone supports each other as much as they can or just try to smile to each other. Doctors smile to kids, and parents smile to doctors. Everyone smiles to the photographer and me, and we smile back. It’s impossible to overcome fear without it, or just survive, and everyone understands that. Probably, except for the youngest kids.
Kristina’s mum and I are waiting at the ward. The 12-year-old girl is dressing up especially for us. Kristina’s mother, Nadezhda, says they come from a small village of Bolshie Dubravy in Kazakhstan. She says no one in the family would have thought what a nightmare they will have to go through after the lively and perky Kristina came home and said that she felt weak, had a high temperature and pain in the leg. Soon they learnt that it’s not a cold or bruise but cancer. Nadezhda recalls how she and her daughter were sent to Alma Aty’s cancer center and were told there that amputation is the only option.
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The Russian Aid Fund was founded in 1996 to assistant the authors of desperate letters sent to Kommersant. We verify the letters with the help of local authorities, then publish the letters in Kommersant, Domovoi magazine and on the site www.rusfond.ru. If you decide to help, you will receive the banking details of the authors of the letters, and the rest is up to you. You just help you help. This approach has been popular with our readers. More than $8.4 million has been collected. We also organize relief efforts during national catastrophes, for 53 families of the miners who died in the Zyryanovskaya Mine in Kuzbass, 57 families of the policemen who burned to death in Samara, 153 families of the victims of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk, 118 families of the sailors who died on the submarine Kursk, 52 families of the hostages who died in the seizure of the performance of Nord Ost, 39 families of those who died in the Moscow Metro on February 6, 2004, 100 families who suffered losses in Beslan. The Fund is the winner of the Silver Archer award.
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Nadezhda tries hard not to break down but she manages to control herself. Kristina is already waiting for us. You can’t burst into tears in front of your daughter.
Kristina is a charming girl with a radiant smile, and she looks absolutely calm compared to her mother. She has pretty eyes and the smile which lights up her face. She continues the story how the Stepanenkos saw a feature on the TV about the Moscow Cancer Center and immediately decided to fly there. Kristina says she has been here since February and even despite the circumstances she likes it here. There are lots of friendly kids here, she says, and you can draw as much as you like when you don’t take treatment. Kristina has never been to the sea, but she draws the underwater world and dreams she will go there some day. Even when she recollects courses of chemo, she winces just a little. I look at her and can’t believe it. I have seen other kids right after the chemo. I wouldn’t wish my enemy to be in their shoes. But Kristina just shrugs her shoulders and says: “Yeah, I felt sick on and off.” She rapidly changes the subject. After all, you need to discuss what to do after finishing school. She may go to a teaching training college in Kostanai in Kazakhstan or may be chose something here, in Moscow. She will study and start teaching others. What subject? She doesn’t know yet. Well, there’s plenty of time – life is long.
While Kristina was telling me this I was recalling what doctors had told me earlier. They said the girl was in a very bad condition when she arrived in Moscow. She needed an intense course of combined chemotherapy to stop cancer cells. Now she needs a surgery. The doctors are ready to replace the affected bone with a German plastic endoprosthesis. “Kids with the prosthesis get well, live full lives, have children, become CEOs and socialites,” the doctors said.
Money is the problem. An endoprothesis is very expensive – about 700,000 rubles. If Kristina was a Russian citizen, she would be entitled to health care funds, authorities’ help and the Russian health system in general. But she is a foreigner and has to pay for absolutely everything – a bed, medication and everything else.
Kazakh officials turned out to be very sluggish. Nadezhda Stepanenko was so desperate that she wrote to Kazakh President Nursultan Narazbaev, and only after this letter at least something started to happen. Officials would tell her: write more – the more papers we gather, the better. But Kristina can’t wait long, she needs a surgery now. But her family are not ready for a war against the bureaucratic army.
Kristina’s mum is an office manager in a local plant growing farm with a monthly salary equivalent to 2,000 rubles or some $90. The whole village of Bolshie Dubravy chipped in to pay for the first examination and chemo. But the Kazakh village won’t manage to pay for the expensive surgery even if the residents sell everything.
The girl knows nothing about it, or even if she does, she prefers not to speak about it. Out of pride, I guess. She sits to the photographer, then we start discussing Harry Potter, other small things and say goodbye to each other like best of friends.
Kristina started a new course of chemotherapy two days ago. The doctors are ready to make a surgery shortly afterwards. The girl is ready for it, too. But the circumstances are now such that not everything depends on her or even doctors. The circumstances are against Kristina so far.
&950,800 Rubles Needed to Save Kristina
“The treatment prognosis is auspicious now,” said Nadezhda Ivanova, chief of the support-motor apparatus tumor department of the Russian Pediatric Oncology Research Institute at the Blokhin Cancer Center. She says she would not dare to give this prognosis every a couple of months ago. “When they flew Kristina in, she was in an awful condition,” she says. “A threat of fracturing the bone and losing the leg was quite real back then. I hope this threat is no more now.”
Kristina was diagnosed with osteogenous sarcoma of the right thigh-bone back in Kazakhstan where the Stepanenkos live. She also underwent the first course of chemotherapy there. But local doctors told the girl’s mother Nadezhda that the leg cannot be saved with this kind of disease, it’s better to save life. After that she took her daughter to Moscow. The girl had treatment on the family’s money as Kazakhstan’s Health Ministry did not allocate a quota for treatment.
Dr. Ivanova says: “We will save the girl’s leg. Unfortunately, Kristina’s home country has no equipment for high-dose chemotherapy, and there is nothing now that could cure the disease. We have already held four courses of chemotherapy with a clearly positive effect. Kristina is now in for an organ-saving surgery to replace the knee-joint with an endoprosthesis. Afterwards, according to the treatment plan, we will hold four to six more courses of chemo for the girl.”
The endoprosthesis, medical treatment and stay in the hospital will cost the Stepanenkos 1.2 million rubles. Nadezhda has been paying the treatment herself so far, but she has no money left now. “We are from a rural are, you can’t make so much money there,” she said in a letter to the Russian Aid Fund. Our partner Kapital Investment Group is making a traditional donation of $10,000. 950,800 rubles more is needed.
Dear friends, our experience of recent years suggest that this price of saving, though considerable, is quite realistic for you. There has never been a case when we would fail to raise the required sum. Here is a special case. Kristina is a girl from another country. Therefore we ask you not to be put off by this big figure. Every ruble is precious, and any kind of aid will be accepted with gratitude. Donations can be transmitted to the Moscow bank account of Nadezhda Stepanenko, Kristina’s mother, or to the hospital directly. Please contact the Russian Aid Fun for the banking details. Visit www.rusfond.ru to learn more.
Expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Andrey Kozenko
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 26, 2007
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