Kiev. Ukraine. Ukraine Gate – January 23, 2021 – Health
Children with cancer will receive the most modern treatment.
The Western Ukrainian Specialized Children’s Medical Center is part of an international project launched by the leading American center for the treatment of cancer in children – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Lviv Hospital became the first in Ukraine to be included in this project.
Participation in this project will allow Lviv doctors to have access to the register of children with cancer in different countries around the world, at any time, if necessary, to see how to treat a particular cancer in Switzerland, USA, Australia, or other countries. And for sick children, it opens the possibility to receive the most modern treatment, such as that received by patients with the same diagnosis in the developed countries of the world.
The goal of this project, as explained by pediatric oncologist Roman Kizima, is to ensure that children from around the world with the same diagnoses are treated according to the same protocol so that they have equal access to the latest drugs. We are talking, first of all, about those children with cancer whose tumors are currently not amenable to standard treatment.
To understand how important this project is for Ukraine and for Lviv in particular, a few words about the hospital that launched this project.
Children from around the world are treated free of charge at St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, USA. Its annual budget is over a billion dollars. But the state does not spend a penny on the needs of the hospital. 75% of the costs are covered by donations from Americans, the rest – insurance companies and grants.
Today, this hospital is the only one in the United States that deals exclusively with pediatric cancer and has its own powerful research center. It has reached such a level of development that it trains doctors and children from all over the world for free. According to hospital statistics, nine out of 10 seriously ill children recover.
The staff of the center aims to bring their achievements in the treatment of cancer in children to medical institutions around the world. They share experience, treatment protocols, invite doctors for internships, teach them their treatment methods, support such institutions in all endeavors. In this case, all financial costs are borne.
Colleagues from the USA noticed Lviv pediatric oncologists at international conferences and congresses, where they made various reports. Specialists from overseas were interested in the achievements of Lviv doctors, the work of the center, its prospects for development and offered cooperation.
In mid-January 2021, the Lviv Center for Children’s Cancer was launched at the Lviv Center. From now on, medical and scientific data on all cases of malignant diseases of the Center’s patients will become part of the global database.
“This registry is a program in which the patient’s data on the properties of his tumor, data on chemotherapy, the patient’s age, etc. are entered. This data is encrypted and can be seen only by physicians, and not all, but only those who have access to this program. When such data on a certain type of cancer is collected per 1000 patients from around the world, then certain research, treatment experiments, new drugs, etc. are conducted. It is planned that in the future it will be a register of hundreds of hospitals around the world. It will be used to decide on childhood cancers at the WHO level, ”says Roman Kizima.
According to the oncologist, not only Americans but also doctors from other countries will have access to this register. Our doctors, in turn, will have access to data in Sweden, the United States, Australia, China, and so on. A doctor can come in at any time and see how a patient with such a diagnosis as a patient in Lviv is treated, for example, in Sweden or China. If a new drug is used to treat a tumor, it will primarily be given to those patients who are registered in the registry.
The patient’s personal data, according to the doctor, will be unavailable, only medical data will be disclosed. And only those doctors who have undergone appropriate training will have access to them. Currently, only three oncologists have such access at the Center, but this circle will be expanded.
“As part of the research programs in which we participate, we receive state-of-the-art drugs for specific patients. Therefore, the purpose of such a register is to maximize the expansion of such programs, ”says Roman Kizima.
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