MOSCOW, June 10. /TASS/. The Arctic Medicine Consortium, organized in July, 2021, unites 27 scientific, educational and business organizations in the country’s eleven regions. The union’s participants will work on technologies to prevent chronical non-communicable diseases, on adaptation programs for shift workers, and on digital solutions for people’s access to high-quality medicine, the Northern State Medical University’s Deputy Rector Tatyana Unguryany told a conference on saving human health in the Arctic, which was organized in Arkhangelsk.
"As of today, 27 organizations have joined the Arctic Medicine Consortium. Those are educational organizations, scientific organizations and industrial partners. <...> The Arctic Medicine consortium has united the Russian Federations’ eleven regions; it is open and thus any organizations, any new members may apply for membership," she said.
The consortium includes eleven universities, nine research centers and seven businesses, including manufacturers of food products, nutritional mixtures, algae products, the Arkhangelsk Pulp and Paper Mill and others. According to the scientist, the formation of this scientific and practical association was a mandatory requirement of the project to develop the Arctic medicine. With that project the university has participated in the Priority 2030 federal program of strategic academic leadership, she added.
"Six consortium members have created already joint projects with our university," she continued. "To date, we plan the implementation of 23 projects, which will feature our consortium members."
Training aspect
According to the forum’s other participants, the Arctic’s harsh climatic conditions suggest new treatment approaches, methods and protocols. Olesya Starzhinskaya, the Arkhangelsk Region’s deputy chairman of the government, spoke about a new model of healthcare in the Arctic zone. Like in most Russian regions, the shortage of medical specialists remains, as well as the shortage of specialists ready for the North’s challenges and specific conditions.
For example, the Siberian State Medical University for the first time in Russia has started training doctors, that will work at remote industrial facilities. According to the university’s rector, Natalia Lukyanova, in the situation without access to high-tech emergency care such a specialist should be a broad specialist.
"For example in a city, a patient with, say, appendicitis will be brought to hospital immediately, but in the tundra no ambulance will arrive in 20 minutes. At most, a helicopter may come in three hours, though in case of bad weather conditions the doctor will have to stay one-on-one with the patient. For a few days the doctor will have to treat him and save the life. In other words, the doctor must have the skills of emergency care and of work with sanitary aviation," Lukyanova said.
Medical studies
The regulations for work in the Arctic and permafrost conditions must be reviewed, said Professor at the Higher School of Economics Valery Chashchin. The consortium members should develop regional standards that will take into account the environmental and climatic situations for every employee. Besides, he added, there must be completely new means of rescuing people in emergency situations in the Arctic. Every year, frostbites in Russia are reasons of up to 10,000 deaths from hypothermia and about 16,000 amputations, he continued. However, there are no real assistance tools: in low temperatures filtering protective means - gas masks and masks, which are necessary to take patients to medical centers, - do not work.
"We have been working with the Institute of Toxicology for a couple of years already <...> on self-rescuers [personal respiratory protection equipment - TASS], and in critical situations <...> they significantly prolong lives and allow delivering patients to specialized medical care centers. <...> Jointly with a pharmaceutical company we are launching work - it will be a set to control remotely the condition of a thermal person who is outside of organized work areas, and a self-rescuer equipment, which people may use in critical situations. This is one of the main directions," Chashchin said.
The Arctic consortium sees great potential also in studying the beneficial properties of algae. According to Ekaterina Kolevatykh of the Kirov State Medical University, the White Sea algae can facilitate the adaptation process in the Far North, and can build up the protection from respiratory viral diseases in children.
Data collecting and unified approaches
The Arctic zone’s large territory requires an intensive development of telemedicine technologies. According to the National Telemedicine Agency Research and Production Association and ATB Electronics’ COB Mikhail Natenzon, the existing telemedicine consortium will cooperate with the Arctic Medicine Consortium. They will use leading developers to increase the availability and compliance with high standards of medical care for residents of hard-to-reach territories, and will also help to collect data on patients that are required for studying, creating relevant treatment recommendations and approaches.
"The work to assess also the health’s physical parameters can be unified. It must be carried out according to uniform methods, so that these data are comparable. What, unfortunately, is still missing in our science, is that we sometimes work according to the protocols that we have invented ourselves and we do not always have a wide enough view. I stress these protocols must be developed and we will start working in certain directions," Lyubov Gorbatova concluded.