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Doctors fail to convince Timoshenko to stop hunger strike

The doctors offered a medical examination to Timoshenko in order to determine what further medical support is needed and work

KIEV, November 7 (Itar-Tass) —— A commission of the Ukrainian Health Ministry has failed to convince former Prime Minister and opposition Batkivshchina party leader Yulia Timoshenko to stop her hunger strike and continue the medical treatment.

“The doctors offered a medical examination to Timoshenko in order to determine what further medical support is needed and work out recommendations. But as before, she refused to be examined. She only talked with the members of the medical commission and doctors of Central Clinical Hospital No. 5,” Kharkov’s Railway Hospital said in a statement posted on its official website on Wednesday, November 7.

The medics stressed that they are acting solely in the interest of the patient and will continue to try to persuade her to “give up the politically motivated hunger strike and continue proper treatment”.

They asked their colleagues from the German Charite clinic to come to Ukraine shortly for the purpose of “examining [Timoshenko] and working out recommendations on further medical support to the patient.

“Ukrainian medics hope that Charite specialists will influence Yulia Timoshenko so as to make her stop her fasting,” the statement said.

Timoshenko went on a hunger strike over falsifications in the October 28 parliamentary elections in Ukraine.

“I announce a hunger strike in protest against falsifications in the elections,” Timoshenko said in a statement read by her lawyer Sergei Vlasenko on October 29.

He said Timoshenko has filed the relevant petition to the State Penitentiary Service. “She refuses to eat and will only drink water,” the lawyer said.

Timoshenko is now undergoing medical treatment at a hospital in Kharkov. She voted in her hospital room.

Timoshenko fell ill on August 18, 2011, two weeks after her arrest. She was taken to hospital on May 9 after a 20-day hunger strike

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.

In late December 2011, Timoshenko was transferred from the investigation prison to a correctional facility in the eastern Kharkov region.

Timoshenko is also facing new charges as former head of the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine.

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