Canada's Partners Program forges links with Ukrainian health care professionals (09/08/96)

Canada's Partners Program forges links with Ukrainian health care professionals

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - Prior to Ukraine's declaration of independence five years ago, Ukrainian medical and health experts relied on getting their information from Moscow. When Ukraine broke free of the crumbling Soviet empire in 1991, suddenly, those charged with keeping Ukraine's 52 million people healthy were stranded.

Beyond the devastating effects of Chornobyl, newly independent Ukrainians found themselves faced with combatting high levels of industrial air and water pollution, as well as a growing number of epidemics affecting major urban centers.

One of the worst happened last June, when Kharkiv's water filtration system collapsed and sent raw sewage into the city's water system, threatening the city's more than 1.6 million residents.

"Whether it was emergency or routine health care issues, professionals relied on getting their information from friends in the United States, Canada or Europe, but it was very hard for them to survive without this information," said Olena Kurysko, health program coordinator for the Canada-Ukraine Partners Program (CUPP) office in Kyiv, recently during a visit to Ottawa.

'When Ukrainian experts started to engage in exchanges with their Canadian counterparts, Ukrainians realized they had real possibilities to stay on the leading edge of breakthroughs in medicine and health care," she added.

Credit for this relationship is largely due to Partners in Health (PIH), one of CUPP's three components (the others being Partners in Public Administration and Partners in Civil Society), which has spent the last four years working with Ukrainians to develop their health system. Ms. Kursyko serves as the Ukrainian liaison for the program.

Currently, PIH, which is managed by the Canadian Society for International Health (CSIH) and currently receives $1.5 million ($1.1 million U.S.) in funding from the Canadian International Development Agency, is focusing on eight projects - ranging from such community health issues as combatting AIDS and drug addiction to pharmacy and nursing.

But rather than exchanging individual professionals between countries as PIH did in the beginning, the Canadian-led project - which runs until March 1998 - now forges links between institutions in Canada and Ukraine.

"The emphasis is on creating relationships that are equal, rather than an expert-counterpart situation," says Paulette Schatz, program manager for PIH in Ottawa. Ms. Kurysko, who worked her way from a secretarial position to that of coordinator in the Ukrainian CUPP office, has seen the difference. "Now you have directors of cardiac or cancer institutes from both countries planning a project together because they speak the same language," she said.

The institute-partnership phase of CUPP has produced a number of recent results, including:

major revisions to Ukraine's outdated national nursing educational curriculum through the collaboration of the Ukrainian Health Ministry, the University of Alberta, Grant MacEwan Community College and the Canadian Nurses Association;
ongoing work with the President's National Anti-AIDS Committee in Ukraine and local anti-AIDS, anti-drugs clinics in Odessa and Donetsk, to share information on prevention techniques and rehabilitation - including a trip to Ukraine this fall involving two Canadian AIDS specialists;
the development of a health education curriculum for children from kindergarten through high school, through a collaboration between the Ukrainian Ministries of Health and Education, Saskatchewan's Education ministry and the Saskatchewan Teachers of Ukrainian; and
the genesis of a health administration program for Ukrainian professionals, thanks to a linkage between the Department of Health Administration at the President's Academy of Public Administration in Ukraine and the University of Toronto Department of Health Administration.

On November 10, the CSIH will review its health reform projects in Ukraine in a special all-day forum in Ottawa.

Ms. Kurysko said PIH's approach is working because it affords both respect and recognition for the intellectual and professional talents of Ukrainians.

"Our people are very capable, but for a very long time, we lived in a society where we collected our salaries and never thought about rainy days, especially older people," she said. "That was just a difference in mentality. But now, we live in a new society where we have to survive. It's an absolutely different approach now."

The new society has even affected Ms. Kurysko. Trained in foreign languages and literature, she plans to pursue a master's degree in health administration.

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Among some of the other ongoing Canadian-Ukrainian health reform projects funded by the Canadian International Development Agency:

a $615,000 ($442,000 U.S.) Health Canada immunization assistance project to support the creation of a national immunization authority in Ukraine which ends in September; and
the University of Alberta's follow-up to the Chornobyl Children's project, which ended two years ago, to train Ukrainian physicians in mother-infant health care. Called Medical Project OSVITA, the $2.6 million ($1.8million U.S. ) project runs until April 1997.