KIEV, April 13 (Itar-Tass) — A course of medical treatment of Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who is serving a seven-year jail term in a penal colony in the northeast city of Kharkov, will take several months, the CEO of the German clinic Charite, Karl Marx Einhopl told reporters Friday.
Dr Einhopl leads a team of German physicians who arrived in Kharkov earlier in the day to familiarize themselves with the conditions for treating Timoshenko at the Central Railway Clinical Hospital.
“I think the course of treatment will take several months, since her disease started out more than half a year ago,” he said.
According to Dr Einhopl, after the inspection of the hospital the physicians planned visiting Timoshenko for a checkup.
“We’ll visit Mrs. Timoshenko and formulate an opinion about her condition and will discuss her health with the people whom she will name personally,” he said. He added that Timoshenko is feeling acute pain.
Dr Einhopl indicated that the conclusion on whether or not the hospital of the Ukrainian Railways company suits the purpose of treating Timoshenko will be drawn and submitted to the authorities in writing within the next few days.
April 4, Timoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko, who is also a member of Ukrainian parliament, said the Healthcare Ministry proposes to place Timoshenko to the hospital of the national railway company that does not specialize in the treatment of the vertebral column.
“Neither Mrs. Timoshenko herself nor her defenders are experts in medicine and that’s why we turned to German doctors with a request to come here and assess the capability of that clinic to provide the treatment they have administered to her,” Vlasenko said.
“In other words, if the doctors see the clinic can provide the needed treatment, then Yulia Vladimirovna /Timoshenko/ will be ready to begin it immediately,” he said. “She insists, however, on being treated by independent physicians.”
However, as early as April 6 Timoshenko’s daughter Yevgeniya said her mother was rejecting treatment at the railway hospital.
“While millions of people are suffering because they have no money to treat either themselves or their children, you stage a demonstration of luxury at hospitals and prisons for the sheer purposes of keeping a high profile,” says Timoshenko’s letter to President Viktor Yanukovich, which Yevgeniya read out to reporters.
“It is for exactly this reason that I reject the unnatural make-belief conditions at the railway hospital,” the letter said. “I demand all of this be used for giving treatment to sick children.”
“Please return the blood plasma, which was taken away from the hospital’s chief physician, to the person who needs it, and as for my own course of treatment, please fulfill the recommendations of independent doctors,” Timoshenko said.
Yevgeniya confirmed Yulia was waiting for the arrival of German doctors from the Charite hospital. “My mother is still experiencing acute pains,” she said.
Somewhat earlier Yevgeny Barash, the acting director of the Kharkov regional branch of the State Penitentiary Service, provided a few details on the hospital premises that have been allotted for Timoshenko.
The mini-area allotted for her stay at the hospital consists of three rooms located on the ninth floor -- the ward with a bed, a wardrobe, a wall luminaire, a washstand, a water boiler, a water cooler, a flatscreen TV, and a separate lavatory.
Located nearby are a dining room, a room for meetings with lawyers, as well as the rooms for plasmapheresis and for various medical procedures, including remedial gymnastics.
Friday, First Deputy Healthcare Minister Raissa Moiseyenko, who chairs the international medical examination commission, said all the conditions meeting the recommendations of foreign doctors have been set up at the railway hospital.