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Timoshenko’s new doctor to make recommendations May 22

“Measures have been determined, they will continue, and we believe that we can expand them,” the doctor said
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

KIEV, May 21 (Itar-Tass) —— Former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko’s new doctor, Annett Reisshauer of the Berlin Charite Clinic, who arrived in Kharkov on Monday, May 21, to oversee her medical treatment at the local railway hospital will make her first recommendations not earlier than Tuesday, May 22.

Reisshauer told journalists that the purpose of her visit is to offer her medical help to Timoshenko, who is undergoing treatment at the Ukrzaliznytsia Central Clinical Hospital.

“We have met and decided on the first steps of treatment,” she said.

“Measures have been determined, they will continue, and we believe that we can expand them,” the doctor said.

She confirmed that Timoshenko’s treatment “is basically possible”.

However Charite Clinic Director Karl Marx Einhopl said earlier it was hard to create proper conditions in Ukraine for successful treatment of Timoshenko.

“My doubts about therapy administration have only become stronger. As a physician, I think that there must be conditions that are probably hard to create in Ukraine. This concerns not only discal hernia, which any one can treat. The patient has had this problem for about six months and has been either given inadequate treatment or partly no treatment at all during that time,” Einhopl said in an interview with the German specialised journal Arzte Zeitung on May 19.

He said the administration of the penal colony, where Timoshenko is serving her seven-year prison term, had not reacted properly to her complaints about back pains.

When asked if she would be operated on, Einhopl said it was difficult to say yet at this point.

He expressed hope that Ukraine “will show courage and make a humane decision that will also be politically beneficial”.

Timoshenko is now taking a course of treatment at Kharkov's railway hospital under the supervision of Lutz Harms of the German Charite Clinic, who returned to Germany on May 17.

Timoshenko fell ill on August 18, 2011, two weeks after her arrest. Her lawyers say that she “has been in bed for about four months”.

Physicians believe that Timoshenko has discal hernia. She has been complaining about pains in the back. Her lawyers claim that her condition was worsening despite medical treatment.

Timoshenko mistrusts Ukrainian medics and rejected their help. She insists that she be examined by independent medics.

On October 11, 2011, Timoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison for having acted in excess of her powers which had resulted in damage to national interests.

Timoshenko has also been barred from holding public positions for three years and has to pay a penalty of 189 million U.S. dollars in damages to Naftogaz Ukrainy.