[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: WP (page 1); WSJ; US Senate

[Deychak, Orest]

The Washington Post

A Section

In Ukraine, H1N1 pandemic sets off panic and politicking; Fear pervades
nation where government is mistrusted, health system is weak 

by Philip P. Pan 

21 November 2009

FINAL

A01

One night at the height of the panic over what people here call the
California flu, as 24-hour news stations tracked a rising death toll and
politicians speculated about a mystery lung plague, Ukraine's prime
minister rushed to the airport to greet a shipment of Tamiflu as if it
were a foreign dignitary. Not to be outdone, the president, a bitter
political foe, dispatched a top aide to meet the plane, too.

In neighboring Belarus, the government took an opposite tack, accusing
drug companies of fanning hysteria over swine flu to boost profit. In
Poland, the health minister is under fire for refusing to stock up on a
vaccine, while doctors in Hungary are resisting orders to administer the
shot. In Turkmenistan, the authorities have been accused of covering up
an epidemic, with infectious-disease wards reportedly full and people
being turned away.

As the pandemic H1N1 influenza surges with the onset of winter, the
nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union appear
particularly vulnerable to the deadly virus. Burdened with weak
health-care systems, relatively inexperienced news media outlets and
shaky governments that have little public trust, the region also seems
ripe for panic and political strife over the flu.

The potential for trouble is already on display in Ukraine, where 1.5
million of its 46 million people have had diagnoses of flu and
respiratory illnesses since the start of the outbreak and 356 have died,
according to the government. The World Health Organization (WHO)
suspects that most of the cases are swine flu, making Ukraine among the
hardest-hit countries in Europe, including Russia, Bulgaria, Moldova and
Poland.

More telling than the numbers, however, has been the widespread fear the
virus has caused in Ukraine, and the outsize impact it has had on the
nation's political landscape.

In the weeks since Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko announced measures
against the spread of the flu -- shutting the nation's schools and
banning public gatherings -- anxious residents have overwhelmed
hospitals and pharmacies, buying up supplies of medicine, gauze masks
and home remedies such as lemons and garlic. Rumors have proliferated
that people are dying of a new, more lethal strain of the virus.

Semyon Gluzman, a psychiatrist and Soviet-era dissident in Kiev, said
the fear was a rational response in a nation with a dysfunctional
health-care system and a corrupt, ineffective government. Hopes soared
in Ukraine after the mass pro-democracy demonstrations known as the
Orange Revolution, he said, but the five years of political infighting
since have undermined the public's faith in the nation's leaders and
political institutions.

"What we're seeing is a normal, psychological reaction to the complete
incompetence of the state authorities," he said. "People are scared, and
they don't know who to trust anymore."

Ukraine's news media -- which gained new freedoms after the Orange
Revolution -- have provided round-the-clock, often sensational coverage
of the outbreak. The nation's leading politicians, meanwhile, are
jockeying for advantage ahead of the January presidential election,
accusing one another of exploiting the crisis by doing too much or
endangering lives by doing too little.

President Viktor Yushchenko, running far behind in his reelection bid,
accused the prime minister of failing to prepare for the outbreak,
saying that she left the national flu center staffed with only one
employee, put doctors in danger and allowed the H1N1 virus to mutate
into a "more aggressive" strain. Aides floated the idea of postponing
the election because of the outbreak.

Tymoshenko, who was a Yushchenko ally in the Orange Revolution, fought
back, criticizing him this week for blocking $125 million in emergency
spending to fight the flu and saying he would be "responsible for every
person who is ill today or dies."

Tymoshenko, shown by the media touring hospitals, issuing instructions
and delivering daily updates on the outbreak, has enjoyed a dramatic
boost in the presidential race. One poll conducted last week put her
within three percentage points of Viktor Yanukovych, the opposition
leader and front-runner, after lagging far behind for months.

Ukraine has one of the weakest health-care systems in Europe, being a
Soviet relic that has barely changed despite 18 years of independence.
Medical care is supposed to be free, but quality is poor, with underpaid
state doctors surviving by taking bribes and selling unnecessary drugs.
Life expectancy is a decade lower than in the European Union.

The WHO says the beleaguered system has held up fairly well, because
advanced equipment or training isn't needed to fight swine flu. But the
organization also identified problems here that could arise throughout
Eastern Europe.

Doctors have been reluctant to treat patients with oxygen because
medical schools in the region emphasize the risk of oxygen poisoning,
for example. Ukrainian hospitals also lack devices to measure blood
oxygen levels precisely, making it dangerous to put patients on
ventilators, said Simon Mardel, a member of the WHO team sent to help
Ukraine.

More broadly, people often waited too long to see a doctor because they
tried home remedies first, and hospitals have struggled to care for the
severely ill because they admit too many mild cases, said David Mercer,
head of the communicable-disease unit in the WHO's Europe office.

Conveying accurate information to the public is another challenge in the
region, he said. In some countries, especially the authoritarian states
of Central Asia, officials are accustomed to concealing disease
outbreaks, while in others, the free press is a relatively new
institution and media outlets dwell on conspiracy theories. "It's like
dealing with English tabloids all the time," Mercer said.

Yevgeny Komarovsky, a pediatrician and popular author in Ukraine, said
the media here so sensationalized the outbreak that "we should also be
counting casualties from heart attacks and high blood pressure due to
the panic." He recalled a five-hour television special in which a series
of ill-informed politicians were interviewed instead of medical experts,
calling it "a concentration of stupidity."

"I felt ashamed for my country," he said, noting that one presidential
candidate complained about shortages of an ointment with no proven
effect and another suggested that the plague had hit Ukraine.

One result of the mistrust in government is deep skepticism about
immunization in general and the swine flu vaccine in particular. The
sentiment is common in Eastern Europe and Russia, where people express
doubts about the safety of state supplies and suspicions of corrupt
deals with drug firms. But it is particularly intense in Ukraine, with
parents often paying doctors to falsify their children's immunization
records.

Confidence in even the WHO was shaken last year after the death of a
teenager who had received a measles shot during one of the
organization's immunization drives. The WHO said he died of meningitis,
but the opposition blamed the vaccine. Some Ukrainian experts concurred,
and a deputy health minister was arrested.

Many doctors accuse Ukraine's leaders of refusing to dispel the public's
vaccine concerns. Others say the fears are justified.

"You can afford the luxury of trusting your government and health
authorities," said Natalya Kolomiyets, a pediatric surgeon and leader of
an anti-vaccine group. "But here, in this country of constant
revolution, we can't."

The Wall Street Journal

World News: Russia-Ukraine Gas Deal Eases Supply Fears in Europe 

By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen 

21 November 2009

The Wall Street Journal 

J

A16

MOSCOW -- A compromise reached late Thursday between Russia and Ukraine
has curbed the risk of another cutoff of natural gas to Europe this
winter, but financial problems and political tensions within Ukraine
still pose a threat, officials on both sides say.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin agreed with his Ukrainian
counterpart, Yulia Tymoshenko, to allow Ukraine to buy less natural gas
than contracted next year, removing the risk of crippling fines being
imposed on Kiev.

In return, Ms. Tymoshenko promised there would be no disruptions in
payment of natural gas or in transit of the fuel to Russia's customers
in Europe.

The deal is good news for Europe, but the situation could still be
complicated by Ukraine's floundering economy as well as political
rivalry ahead of January's presidential elections, Russian officials
say.

Should another natural-gas dispute arise, however, Europe stands much
better prepared to weather it than in past years, as demand for the fuel
has weakened while Europe's storage facilities are full.

Last winter, a Russia-Ukraine dispute over natural-gas payments led to a
two-week disruption of Russia's natural gas supply to much of Europe in
January, leaving many Eastern Europeans without heat amid freezing
temperatures.

No details were given about the agreement reached Thursday, but Mr.
Putin said the two countries' natural gas companies -- Russia's OAO
Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz -- will put the accord in writing.

"You can't give a 100% guarantee, but this deal does significantly
reduce the risk of a new gas conflict," a Naftogaz official said.

Mr. Putin had warned in recent weeks that Ukraine could have trouble
paying its natural gas bills to Moscow.

He said Russia would again turn off the taps if it believed Ukraine was
siphoning Russian gas from pipelines meant for export to other European
customers.

In Kiev, natural gas has become a fractious political issue. Ms.
Tymoshenko is running for the presidency in the January elections, and
incumbent Viktor Yushchenko -- far behind in the polls -- has criticized
her natural-gas deals as overly favorable to Moscow.

United States Senate

Chamber Action

Friday, November 20, 2009 

Nominations Confirmed: Senate confirmed the following nominations: John
F. Tefft , of Virginia, to be Ambassador to Ukraine.

 

 

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