U.S. Army medical personnel evaluate needs in Ukraine (08/17/97)

U.S. Army medical personnel evaluate needs in Ukraine

by Roman G. Golash

WASHINGTON - The United States Army Medical Research and Material Command sent six medical personnel to evaluate and discuss infectious diseases in the Ukrainian military. The goal of the Infectious Disease Assessment Team, in Kyiv from June 14-21, was to ascertain how and what type of future missions should be organized and implemented. The Ukrainian military has shortages of vaccines, antibiotics and medical equipment and the U.S. military is interested in assisting the Ukrainian military in these areas.

The delegation to Ukraine included: Lt. Col. Inia I. Yevich, of Washington who is a specialist in dermatology, and also provided interpretation; Maj. Jefferey M. Gambel of Washington, a preventive medicine physician who gathered information on infectious diseases and epidemiology; Lt. Col. Shirley Newcomb of Atlanta, Ga., a community health nurse who evaluated health care educational programs within the Ukrainian military; Capt. Deborah Hastings of Maryland, the group environmental engineer; Dr. Alexander Sokhin from the Borden Institute of Walter Reed Army Medical Center provided Russian interpretation; Maj. Roman G. Golash from Chicago provided Ukrainian interpretation and served as a clinical microbiologist. Lt. Col. Yevich led the mission.

In Kyiv, the opening session was chaired by Maj. Gen. Nikolai Volkadav, first deputy chief of the Main Military Medical Directorate of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and deputy surgeon general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who gave the American team an overview of the Ukrainian military health care system.

Many meetings took place at the Main Military Hospital in the heart of Kyiv. Col. Mikhail Boychak, head of the Main Military Clinical Hospital was our host and explained the organization and functioning of the hospital.

Most of the week was spent at the hospital with an excursion to the town of Irpin to view non-traditional treatments. The hospital is a facility of contrasts: the Ukrainians have an MR yet use glass petri dishes in the laboratory. The theoretical knowledge is very high, yet they do not have funds to vaccinate military medical workers against the Hepatitis B virus. It is a system in transition.

The American team also visited the Armored Officer Cadet School, where students study tank warfare and receive an engineering degree and a military commission at the end of a five-year program. The group visited the school to see how they maintain a troop medical clinic. During the week Lt. Col. Yevich and Maj. Golash visited Col. Gen. Ivan Bizhan, First Deputy Minister of Defense. At the end of the week, the team stopped by the U.S. Embassy and gave a briefing to Col. Ilona W. Kwiecien, Army attache and to Maj. Lee Gabel, Partnership for Peace coordinator officer.

Although there were logistical challenges, the week was a success as far as gathering of important medical data. This data will be used to send other groups and teams to implement programs jointly agreed to by the U.S. and by the Ukrainians. However, the issue of language was a major disappointment. Russian is used more often now than in any of the previous three missions to Ukraine. In previous missions, everything was written in Ukrainian, now it's mostly in Russian. There was more Ukrainian spoken on the streets of Kyiv four years ago. Due to the efforts of the team, we did manage to hold many of our conferences in Ukrainian, but it was always a struggle.

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