Ukrainian Diplomats Invite German Doctors To Visit Kharkiv To Settle Problem Of Tymoshenko's Treatment

KIEV, Ukraine -- The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has asked Germany to assist in organizing a visit to Kharkiv by German doctors who were members of the international commission for the examination of former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko to check whether the hospital in which Tymoshenko is to be treated meets their requirements.
"On April 4, 2012 the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine invited German Ambassador to Ukraine Hans-Jurgen Heimsoeth to a meeting."

"The Ukrainian side passed the German ambassador a request for assistance in organizing a visit to Ukraine by the German doctors who were members of the international medical commission to examine Tymoshenko, so that they could check whether the medical establishment which was selected by the Ukrainian side meets their recommendations," the press secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Oleksandr Dykusarov, said on Wednesday.

According to him, the Embassy of Ukraine in Germany has also sent an invitation from the Ukrainian side to the management and doctors of the Charite Clinic.

"We hope that German doctors can come to Ukraine as soon as possible."

"The quick settlement of this issue will allow the examination and treatment recommended by doctors for Tymoshenko to start at a special establishment outside the Kachanivska prison colony," the diplomat said.

Global Health Fund Urges Ukraine To Step Up Fight Aagainst HIV/AIDS Epidemic

KIEV, Ukraine -- The head of a global health fund on Monday urged Ukraine to step up its efforts to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Europe’s largest.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, called on the Ukrainian authorities to expand opiate substitution therapy, ensure HIV/AIDS treatment in prison and increase government funding of anti-AIDS programs.

“This is the region of the world — the only region of the world — where the AIDS epidemic is still growing,” Kazatchkine told reporters in Kiev, adding that other countries have managed to stabilize their epidemics.

The Global Fund is set disburse $86 million for HIV prevention and treatment in Ukraine in 2012-2013, part of a massive $305 million five-year grant.

The fate of the grant came under threat last year due to the government’s failure to ensure an uninterrupted supply of anti-AIDS drugs, but Tetyana Aleksandrina, a government official charged with AIDS prevention vowed that such delays will not happen again.

The United Nations says Ukraine has Europe’s worst AIDS epidemic with 1.3 percent of the population above 15 infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Russian toddler dies in Bryansk pavement collapse

A toddler in Bryansk in western Russia has died after falling through a hole that opened up as his mother took him for a walk.

The pavement gave way because of a burst hot-water pipe, emergency officials said.

The boy's mother, 26, was pulled alive from the hole by her traffic police officer husband, reports say.

But he was unable to rescue his son, who was thrown from his pushchair and fell into the sewer below.

"The woman managed to grab on to the edge of the collapsed pavement, which saved her life," a Bryansk official was quoted as saying.

Her husband had apparently been on duty in the area on Sunday afternoon and rushed to the scene, climbing down into the hole with the aid of a rope to pull his wife to safety.

Named by Russian media as Tatyana Didenko, she was taken to hospital in shock.
Although remnants of the one-and-a-half-year-old boy's clothing were found by search teams, it was not until late on Monday afternoon that his body was discovered.

The toddler, named by reports as Kirill, was found 6km (3.5mi) from the spot where he disappeared, according to police.

The cause of the pavement collapse is unclear but investigators are looking at problems with the construction of a local sewage plant.

Bryansk regional governor Nikolai Denin told Russia 24 TV that recent mild weather could have caused a pipe to rupture, leading to sand below the pavement being washed away.

Investigators have opened a criminal manslaughter case.

Mr Denin said a large proportion of the city's infrastructure was not in top condition: "We have to start rebuilding things because otherwise this could happen again."

Penitentiary Service: Tymoshenko again refuses to take blood test

The medical staff of Kyiv's detention facility proposed that former Ukrainian Prime Minister and Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko take a blood test, but she has refused, the press service of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine has reported.

"On Dec. 2, the medical staff of Kyiv's detention facility proposed that Yulia Tymoshenko, in the presence of her personal doctor, take a blood test for laboratory analysis, as recommended by a Ukrainian Health Ministry commission, but for the reasons of distrust and citing the confidentiality of information, Tymoshenko again refused to take a blood test and submitted a written statement to the management of the detention facility," reads the statement.

Judge Olena Sitaylo of Kyiv’s Court of Appeals ruled late on Dec. 1 that Tymoshenko will remain in prison during an appeals hearing despite health concerns.

Funeral held for Russia’s HIV prevention efforts

A protest featuring coffins and funereal music outside the Health Ministry served to bid a final farewell to HIV prevention and treatment in the country, activists conducting the protest said on Thursday, World AIDS day.

Russia is just one of only several countries, where the number of HIV positive people is increasing, according to the Russian-based Federal AIDS Research Center, and the rate of infection is to double in the next five years according its head Vadim Pokrovsky.

Since 2009, over 60,000 people every year have been diagnosed HIV positive.

Passers-by were bedazzled to see a funeral train marching down Ulitsa Ilinka, flanked with government offices, and some even followed the group to the Health Ministry.

Accidental onlookers took their mobile phones out to shoot the group standing in front of the grey building behind two coffins with signs “prevention” and “treatment” pinned on their lids.

“We’ve been staging these protest for years,” Sergei Golovin, one of the rally organizers from the movement Patsiensky Kontrol, or Patients’ Control, told, shortly after police rounded all the protesters from the site. “No-one ever went out to meet us from the ministry,” he added.

In some Russian regions, over 1 percent of population aged 15-55 has HIV, according to the center’s data. The numbers are exceptionally high for people between 25 and 35 years of age.

“It’s a terrifying number of 2.5 percent of men aged 30-35 who are registered as HIV positive, which means one in 40,” head of the center, Vadim Pokrovsky, told journalists.

Since 1987, when the officials started recording numbers, 636,979 HIV positive people have been officially registered in Russia, and 104,257 of them are now dead, according to Pokrovsky.

The ministry, however, seems to have a more positive view on the situation, according to chief specialists for HIV-diagnostics and treatment, Alexei Mazus.

“The epidemic in Russian has come to a new stage where it can be controlled,” he told RIA Novosti in an interview. The progress was due to healthcare officials, who carried out lifesaving programs with the backing from the state, he added.

Pokrovsky said, however, that his center’s research said the problem continued to grow.

“Over the past 10 moths 48,363 new cases have been found, which is by 9.6 percent more than for the same period next year,

AIDS In Ukraine: Still No Cure For Corruption

KIEV, Ukraine -- Today is World AIDS day. And once again, UNAIDS's annual report shows that the situation in eastern Europe and central Asia is dreadful, offsetting some progress in Africa.

Ukraine's HIV infection rate, 1.3% of over-15s, is the worst in Europe. Ukraine and Russia account for 90% of all HIV cases in the region.

Fewer than one-fifth of Ukrainian HIV patients receive anti-retroviral treatment. Botswana and Rwanda manage more than 80%.

In both Russia and Ukraine the epidemic is driven by intravenous drug use, with addicts accounting for around half of all cases.

Yet the Ukrainian government seems uninterested in prevention programmes.

"There's a line in the national AIDS programme budget for prevention," says Andriy Klepikov, head of AIDS Alliance Ukraine, "but its value is set at zero".

Places like the Drop In Centre in Kiev's Holosiiv district are funded by international donors.

The centre offers drug users tea, coffee and information, and is a base for harm-reduction initiatives such as itinerant needle exchanges.

When I visited, eight patients on the local methadone programme gathered to air their complaints.

They're grateful to the centre for providing them with somewhere to sit and chat, they say.

They find the atmosphere at the state-run (but foreign-funded) methadone clinic hostile.

"Police are stationed nearby and they regularly search us," says Pavel Kutsev, the centre's chairman, himself an addict of 30 years.

Drugs, the group agree, are a cash cow for the corrupt police: they take bribes from those they find in possession, they take a cut from the dealers, or even sell drugs directly.

Drug users are also useful scapegoats for other crimes: "If you detain them without access to drugs they will sign any papers you want," says Kostiantyn Pertsovskyi at AIDS Alliance.

It's not exactly heroin that most Ukrainian addicts use, but rather cheaper liquid opiates made in the country.

These are more dangerous than straight heroin: even if the syringes are clean, the liquid itself may be contaminated with HIV thanks to dirty equipment used by the dealers, or sometimes deliberate use of blood as a mixer.

So "substition therapy" — weaning users off opiates and on to controlled alternatives like methadone — is clearly crucial to reducing the risk of infection.

But aside from the discouraging atmosphere at methadone centres, the programme is, participants say, half-baked.

There is no co-ordination between methadone distribution and anti-retroviral treatment, notes Mr Kutsev.

Patients are sometimes forced to make long and expensive journeys across Kiev.

Moreover, without the prospect of proper rehabilitation, methadone can be a life sentence.

"My daughter injects drugs", says Oksana, a patient at the clinic, "but I would advise her not to go on methadone. The drugs she could potentially quit, but not this."

Yet funding for alternatives is a distant dream.

Ukraine's government has recently agreed a co-funding deal with the Global Fund, an international organisation, worth $85m over the next two years, but AIDS Alliance says that the government's bit will be spent almost entirely on medical treatment rather than prevention.

"They usually procure medicines at a higher price than they need to," says Mr Klepikov. His (widely shared, if unproven) suspicion is that kickbacks are at work.

The rate of new HIV infections in Ukraine is stabilising: it was up this year, but only by 1%.

This improvement is largely the result of prevention programmes, says Mr Klepikov, who laments the lack of funding for such schemes.

Another annual report published this week may help explain Ukraine's performance on HIV/AIDS.

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index showed Ukraine slipping 18 places to 152nd out of 183 countries.

78 Children Ill With Food Poisoning At Ukraine Summer Camp

KIEV, Ukraine -- Poor-quality food prepared at a Ukrainian summer camp has left 84 Russian children and staff at the vacation centre ill, health officials said Wednesday.

The mass food poisoning took place at the Albatros youth resort near the port city Sevastopol, in the Black Sea peninsula Crimea.

Most of the 78 victims were aged from 8 to 16 and had travelled to the camp from the Russian cities of Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and Orekhovo-Zuevo, Interfax reported.

All but one of the children were suffering from moderate food poisoning and were expected to recover quickly, while one child was faring worse than the others. Six adults also were treated.

Health Minister Oleksandr Anishchenko said he intended to sack the public health director in the city Sevastopol for allowing the summer camps to operate, and for failing to enforce health regulations.

Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka has ordered a nationwide investigation into food preparation safety at summer youth camps, with a 'special focus' on the Chernihiv and Zaporizhia districts, as well as the city of Sevastopal.

All three locations have in recent weeks seen mass cases of food-poisoned children on summer vacation, he said.

Health officials were inspecting the camps' kitchens, and managers there would likely face criminal charges, an official at the Emergency Situations Ministry said.

A Channel 24 television news report said inspectors found 'massive health law violations.'

Anishchenko said he believed the food poisoning was caused by ice cream which all 84 ill people had eaten, out of a total 293 children and staff members at the camp.

'Anyone who ate ice cream got sick,' he said, according to Korrespondent web magazine.

The Russian government was organizing charter transportation for the children to return home immediately, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

A Channel 24 television news report said inspectors found 'massive health law violations.'

Anishchenko said he believed the food poisoning was caused by ice cream which all 84 ill people had eaten, out of a total 293 children and staff members at the camp.

'Anyone who ate ice cream got sick,' he said, according to Korrespondent web magazine.

The Russian government was organizing charter transportation for the children to return home immediately, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement.

Group food poisoning most often occurs in Ukraine during the summer months when warm weather and occasional poor refrigeration cause quick spoilage of food served to holiday-markers.

Dairy, fish, meat, eggs and mayonnaise are the foods most commonly affected.

Ukraine Will Not Demand Information About AIDS From Foreigners

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine has abolished the obligation for foreigners to provide a certificate of absence of HIV/AIDS in obtaining a Ukrainian visa.
Appropriate changes to the law on prevention of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) cases and social protection of population have taken effect.

This rule has long been considered discriminatory in the world and was cancelled by almost all civilized countries.

Overcoming it is a significant step forward in protecting human rights and reducing discrimination towards people living with HIV/AIDS, says a statement by the all-Ukrainian network of people who live with HIV/AIDS.

Ensuring the confidentiality of a HIV-infected person is another significant addition of new legislation.

If earlier information on a HIV-positive status of a patient could be transferred to other health professionals, now it can be done only with a written consent of the person and as part of employment duties (in transferring the patient to another doctor).

This is a particularly important innovation to protect people in small towns, where disclosure of information would lead to its leakage outside the medical establishment and instant dissemination across the town or village.

The result is a complete loss of normal life for the HIV-positive person due to actual trying to isolate this person from society despite scientific evidence that HIV is not transmitted through everyday contact.

Earlier, the World Health Organization, United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and UNICEF issued a report, according to which Ukraine could have from 160,000 to 190,000 people who need anti-retroviral drugs, namely, drugs that give patients the opportunity to lead a normal life.

Fewer People Smoking In Ukraine

KIEV, Ukraine -- A significant number of Ukrainian men and women have stopped smoking since 2005, two-thirds of current smokers would like to quit and more than 90 percent of the population supports a total ban on smoking in the workplace, according to the largest tobacco survey ever conducted in Ukraine.
“We’re happy with the result,” said Nataliya Korol, a national survey officer from the World Health Organization’s Ukraine office. “But we can’t let up.”

Released on Sept. 27, the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), which was conducted between 2008-2010, provides not only detailed information about the country’s smoking habits, but also shows how they have changed since Ukraine’s parliament ratified in 2006 the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

FCTC was developed by WHO as the world’s first international public health treaty in an effort to combat the global smoking epidemic.

Ukraine was one of 13 countries that undertook a GATS study. GATS is the international standard used for systematically monitoring adult tobacco use, both smoking and smokeless, and tracking key tobacco control indicators. It is a nationally representative survey that uses standard protocol across countries.

The study showed that 28.8 percent of Ukrainian adults smoke, half of whom are men. The nation's smoking prevalence had been 37 percent in 2005.

Some 67.9 percent of current smokers said they would like to quit, while 40.5 percent tried to kick the habit in the past year. A large majority of adults, 93.1 percent, said they believe smoking causes serious illness, while 86.3 percent believe second-hand smoke is extremely harmful.

Just less than 33 percent of adults inhale secondhand smoke daily or almost daily and 34 percent are exposed to secondhand smoke at work. Two-thirds of adults surveyed said they noticed any anti-cigarette smoking information, and only 45.1 percent noticed cigarette marketing.

Tobacco prematurely kills more than 100,000 people in Ukraine annually and is some 13 percent of the country’s disease burden. Around 70 percent of tobacco-related deaths occur in the 35-69 age groups, experts said.

The drop in smoking rates has come despite a strong tobacco lobby in the Ukrainian parliament, which cuts across all political groups, said officials who presented the GATS finding at a press conference in Kyiv. In fact, the lobby has kept taxes low, making Ukraine's cigarettes among the cheapest in Europe.

“This decrease was the result of introducing in Ukraine measures which showed their effectiveness in other countries,” said Mykola Polischuk, Ukraine’s former health minister who authored the country’s tobacco control law adopted in 2005.

Lawmaker Lesiya Orobets, however, said her colleagues are still dragging their feet in approving graphic warnings that are to be placed on cigarette cartons to dissuade smokers. “They say in (parliament) that these drawings are terrible,” she said sarcastically.

Officials are concerned that cigarette companies will target young people now that adults appear to be cutting back on smoking. Indirect tobacco costs to Ukraine’s economy were about $3 billion in 2007.

To ensure the young don’t light up and adults continue to quit, experts said Ukraine must raise excise taxes on cigarettes.

“When cigarettes are cheaper than chocolate and milk, priority number one is to raise taxes,” said Hanna Hapko, the advocacy coordinator in Ukraine for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit group that has worked to get anti-smoking laws passed in parliament and cooperates with other organizations on anti-tobacco educational campaigns.

Kostantin Krasovsky, who heads the tobacco control unit at the health ministry’s Ukrainian Institute of Strategic Research, told the Kyiv Post other steps that should be taken to decrease tobacco use in Ukraine include establishing a national monitoring and surveillance system to measure the effectiveness of tobacco control policies and tobacco consumption; amending national legislation and regulations to increase coverage and improve enforcement of smoke-free policies; establishing a comprehensive national system of activities to diagnose and treat tobacco dependence; create greater visibility of messages about the various dangers of tobacco use, including nargile, cigarillos and other tobacco products and developing other informational activities.

“Legislation should be amended to remove point-of-sale, Internet, and other kinds of tobacco advertising,” he said. “These policies, when fully enacted and enforced, will reduce the burden of disease and deaths in those who smoke or are exposed to the tobacco smoke of others.”

In September 2009, the Cabinet of Ministers approved a national targeted social program until 2012 that mitigates harmful effects of tobacco on human health and monitors the effectiveness of policies for the prevention and reduction of tobacco use.

The GATS survey was based on 8,173 completed interviews with individuals 15 years of age and older from randomly selected households.

It was conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) and supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, WHO and Bloomberg Philanthropies, an umbrella organization which manages the charitable giving of billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City.

Ukraine: Where HIV Runs Rampant

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine’s AIDS nightmare may be about to become worse. At the moment the ex-Soviet republic is already the country hardest-hit in Europe, with an estimated 360,000 individuals suffering from AIDS or HIV.
But experts say that they have been tracking an alarming trend in the past years: HIV is increasingly moving from isolated, individual niches into the general population. And both health officials and NGOs agree that the country's response is vastly underfunded.

Recently, a small, yellow bus entered a back parking area amid the crumbling white high-rises in Kiev’s Obolon bedroom community and halted in front of a small convenience store.

This is the frontline in the battle against HIV/AIDS in Ukraine. In a few minutes, its clients gradually appeared: eight men apparently in their 20s or early 30s, dressed similarly in jeans and windbreakers, with close-cropped hair.

The bus belongs to AIDS activist organization ENEY, and the young men had come to be tested for HIV. All are drug users — the sector of the population, along with sex workers, battered hardest by the disease in Ukraine. According to ENEY workers, about 40 percent of all addicts may be infected.

Inside the bus, Anton, a medical technician with Latin script tattooed up both his arms, drew blood from each in turn, and after 10 minutes delivered a verdict — seven were healthy, but one was HIV-positive.

“Today was a relatively good day — quiet. No fights, and the police did not hassle us,” said Anton, as the bus pulled away.

An estimated 1.3 percent of Ukraine’s adult population is believed to suffer from HIV/AIDS. Officially, just over 100,000 people are infected, but government officials concede that the number is probably much higher. Some 19,000 have died since 1987.

According to the United Nations’ organization UNICEF, eastern Europe and central Asia are the world regions where the HIV virus is spreading fastest.

The Ukrainian government’s response — though focusing on the right areas with the correct methods — has been insufficient. “Ukraine has all the set-up, but it needs to do much more,” said Anna Shakarishvili, the director of the United Nations’ HIV/AIDS program in Ukraine.

According to Shakarishvili, less than half of those infected with HIV/AIDS receive treatment, while only one-third of drug users have access to preventive measures, like clean needles.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Ukraine is overwhelmingly dependent on international donors for providing the funds and means to deal with the problem — while the world economic crisis means that many of these resources are being curtailed.

Ukrainian health officials agree that the government’s reaction has fallen short, but they say that they can only do so much with the money that the central government budgets them.

Svitlana Cherenko, head of the health ministry’s HIV/AIDS unit, said that they need five times the $40 million that is now allotted to combat the disease adequately. Of this sum, however, the ministry only received about $24 million.

There is one bright spot however, said Cherenko: The rate of infections has slowed considerably.

“If we were looking at a 40 percent increase year-on-year in the beginning of the decade, now it's dropped down to around 5 to 7 percent,” she said.

Ultimately, a society-wide outbreak could prove far beyond the capabilities of Ukraine’s antiquated, cash-strapped and corruption-rife medical system, which has been exacerbated by the ongoing economic crisis.

“Some projections are already available,” Shakarishvili said. “Unless Ukraine’s efforts are not upscaled, we will be seeing about 25,000 new infections every year.”

$50 Million Dollars Allegedly Missing From Ukraine Swine Flu Fund

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian officials managing a government effort to combat swine flu may have stolen more than $50 million dollars in international donations, the Interfax news agency reported Monday.
A suit filed in an Oregon court on behalf of the Ukrainian government alleges the money went missing after hundreds of millions of dollars given the former Soviet republic to buy swine flu vaccine were funneled to an overseas shell company, according to a statement by the legal firm filing the suit, Trout Cacheris LLC.

US-based managers of the Belize-registered company Olden Group LLC received millions of dollars sent to Ukraine by foreign donors from 2008 to 2010, and skimmed funds while acting as international purchaser for medical supplies, according to the suit.

The company bought swine vaccine on the world market, resold it to Ukraine's Ministry of Health at inflated prices, and divided the illegal cash gains with serving Ukrainian officials, according to the report.

The suit was filed as part of a Ukraine government anti-corruption programme headed up by the country's Cabinet of Ministers.

The activities alleged in the complaint, if proved, are punishable under the US' Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

The cash-funneling, if proved, would also implicate officials loyal to Ukraine's previous government, which was headed by then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, according to the report.

Tymoshenko, now leading Ukraine's opposition, has alleged Ukraine's present government is conducting a witch hunt against her and her supporters.

She complained last week of having received telephone death threats, and linked them to unnamed officials working for Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych.

She has claimed she 'could never' receive a fair trial in Ukraine.

Italian gymnast fell out of sixth floor window in Moscow

Russian doctors are fighting for the life of a young gymnast who fell out of a sixth-floor window in Moscow.

Violetta Ballirano, 15, fell out of an apartment and received serious injuries, including a broken shoulder, broken ankle and brain contusion, RIA Novosti reported. She is currently in intensive care in Moscow’s Botkin hospital.

The Italian athlete was at a party with friends at 10 pm on Sunday, when the incident occurred.

One version of events suggests that Violetta got in an argument with her boyfriend, who accused her of flirting with another and then left. Violetta then started crying, told her friends that she would go home, but instead jumped out of the window, according to the paper.

The police started an investigation and are questioning all those present at the party.

Chernobyl Species Decline Linked To DNA

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Scientists working in Chernobyl have found a way to predict which species there are likely to be most severely damaged by radioactive contamination.
The secret to a species' vulnerability, they say, lies in its DNA.

This discovery could reveal which species are most likely to decline or even become extinct in response to other types of environmental stress.

The researchers published their findings in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Professor Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, US, and Dr Anders Moller from the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, France, led the study.

The two scientists have been working in Chernobyl for more than a decade, gathering data about the populations of insects, birds and mammals in "zone of alienation" surrounding the desolate nuclear power station.

One explanation may be that these species have, for whatever reason, less capable DNA repair mechanisms”

For this study, they used existing databases to examine in detail the DNA patterns of each of the species they had studied in Chernobyl.

With every generation of a species' lineage, the pattern of its DNA changes ever so slightly, as a result of the natural balance between mutations and the individual's ability to repair damaged DNA. This is how species evolve.

The rate of this change - as each piece of the DNA code is replaced by another - is called the substituion rate.

"This information is available in large database," Professor Mousseau explained. "So you can get the DNA sequences [of each species] and examine the changes that have occurred among a species over time.

"What we have discovered is that when we look at the species in Chernobyl, we can predict, based on their substitution rates, which ones are most vulnerable to contaminants."

Professor Mousseau said that the Chernobyl setting offered a "unique opportunity to look at a natural experiment in progress - [to see] what happens to species when they have this kind of environmental perturbation".

The results of this study could shed light on which species are most vulnerable to other kinds of environmental contamination.

Brightly coloured birds and birds that have a long distance migration were some of the organisms most likely to be affected by contaminants.

"One explanation may be that these species have, for whatever reason, less capable DNA repair mechanisms," said Professor Mousseau.

Lousise Johnson, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Reading, said the findings were "fascinating".

"Extreme events like Chernobyl provide opportunities to test predictions about evolution," she said. Some of the difficulties of such research is that it isn't really an experiment- it is impossible to control for all of the confounding variables.

"But [the scientists] have been very careful to test all of the other factors that could be important - antioxidants, population size, body size, etc. of bird species and it appears... that there is a shared causal relationship between accumulating mutations over time and the ability to withstand radiation."

Ukrainian Officials Say Wildfires Under Control

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry said today that all of the wildfires in Kyiv Oblast have been extinguished and no fire danger exists in the Chornobyl region, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports.
The ministry's press service said firefighters had extinguished a peat fire near the village of Synyaky in Kyiv Oblast's Vyshhorodsky district and that seven other large fires were put out in the oblast in the past day.

It told RFE/RL there are currently no fires in Kyiv Oblast, and that the situation in the forests near the Chornobyl nuclear disaster zone is under
control.

Meanwhile, wildfires have been reported in other Ukrainian regions.

Emergency Situations Ministry officials in the northern Chernihiv Oblast told that local firefighters managed to localize a peat fire near the village of Kukshyn in the Nyzhyn district today, but have not yet extinguished it.

Officials said efforts to extinguish fires continue in four more villages in Chernihiv Oblast.

Extreme heat and carelessness led to wildfires in Ukraine earlier this month. Two small fires were reportedly extinguished in forests near the Chornobyl disaster zone last week.

Fears Rise Over Fires In Chernobyl Forests

KIEV, Ukraine -- As fires burn across Ukraine amid a heat wave, international and local experts have warned of the high risk of a wildfire in the highly radioactive 30-kilometer radius around the closed nuclear power plant.
A combination of heat, wind, drought and poor forest management could help spread such a fire in the no-man’s-land “exclusion zone” near the 1986 disaster, which remains the world’s worst nuclear power accident. Wildfires there would release radioactivity in smoke clouds.

The scientific consensus seems to be that the particles would not be of sufficient quantity to seriously endanger people’s health, except perhaps for those closest to the blaze.

Although, as with most Chernobyl-related assessments, nobody knows for sure what the fallout would be.

“There is an extraordinary situation in terms of wildfire risk in the Chernobyl exclusion zone,” said Professor Johannes Goldammer, head of the Global Fire Monitoring Center in Freiburg, Germany.

“The danger results from the lack of any forest management in the decades following the accident. Forest has been growing up without any clearance of dead wood. And there are large stretches where insect infestation has created dying forest that could easily burn.

The whole exclusion zone is at risk of fire.” Goldammer, whose institute is the leading European research center on forest fires, said that “repeated meetings” with Ukrainian officials in recent years have not led to a clear policy “to reduce the risk of fire in the zone.”

Lack of money, he said, shouldn’t be an issue as international groups would be willing to provide emergency grants.

Serhiy Vus, head of the department for the Chernobyl exclusion zone at Kiev Regional State Administration, said on Aug. 6 that there was “a normal and stable situation” in the Chernobyl zone, with two fires reported in early August that were quickly contained.

Experts say the harm caused by the radioactive fallout from a large forest fire in the Chernobyl zone would be limited.

“Our conservative model shows that the radio nuclides released in the smoke would remain below critical level and would not pose a risk to the population,” Goldammer said.

“But it would not surprise me that if it turned out to be higher in the case of an extreme fire. The most dangerous aspect would probably result from radioactivity entering the food chain.” Serhiy Zibtsev, professor at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences in Kiev, had an encouraging assessment.

“The amount would not exceed the critical threshold of danger to the population,” Zibtsev said.

However, localized danger could be serious.

Experts at the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection on Aug. 6 said: “Fires in the Chernobyl area can have radiological effects in the immediately surrounding area if people inhale the radioactive particles in the air.

The level of the resulting radiation exposure depends on the fire and on the individual behavior of these people and cannot be generalized.

However, the fires do not have any radiological consequence for the rest of Europe and Germany, since the dispersion of the radioactive substances is regionally limited. This has been known from former fires in the area.”

The German experts noted that there had been no sign of increased radiation as a result of the wildfires in Russia.

Zibtsev, the Ukrainian professor, said a large-scale fire “could be a catastrophe” in a remote area, if the wind is strong, because of a lack of modern firefighting equipment.

“And remember, once a forest fire reaches 50 hectares, there is no real way of stopping it before it burns out,” he said. While the zone has its own dedicated firefighters, detection of fires remains weak.

Emergency Ministry officials admitted on Aug. 10 that the few inhabitants in the “exclusion zone” impede their ability to spot fires quickly.

“There needs to be automatic detection, including towers with cameras and remote sensors,” Goldammer said. While the health dangers to the general population may not be high, risks could be more serious to firefighters and other workers in the zone who would battle such a blaze.

Oleksandr Klyuchnikov, president of Ukrainian Nuclear Society, who has worked at the Chernobyl reactor since the accident in 1986, said weather conditions would determine whether the smoke was carried to Kiev.

Klyuchnikov noted that radioactivity in the zone has already increased lately, due to more dust created by the extreme heat. Goldammer said Ukraine is on the right track in restricting access to forests and raising public awareness of the issue and the need for responsible behavior.

“All the fires in western Russia were caused by humans,” he said, “ranging from shashlyk fires and dropped cigarettes to farmers burning the stubble off fields.

The lack of people in the exclusion zone therefore reduces fire risk. But we all know that people live in the zone, and also enter the zone especially to hunt and, of course, there is also work going on there. So there should be no complacency on this account.”

Ukraine: Doctors Punished For Fighting AIDS

The Ukraine government's response to injection drug use is exacerbating the country's HIV epidemic and the situation is likely to get worse, HIV activists there say.
Ukraine officials are prosecuting injection drug users and thwarting medical approaches to fighting drug addiction, in the process neutralizing prevention efforts aimed at the most common mode of HIV transmission in the country, advocates say.

Non-governmental organizations in Ukraine report widespread detention of patients at treatment centers, arrests of medical staff and forced disclosure of confidential patient information.

"The signs over the last few months have not been good," said Pavlo Skala, senior program manager at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine. "Things are going downhill with the Ukrainian leadership's approach to HIV/AIDS treatment."

From 2001 to 2008, HIV infection in eastern Europe and central Asia rose 66 percent. Ukraine's adult HIV infection rate of 1.1 percent is believed to be one of the highest in Europe. The country has as many as 300,000 injection drug users, with up to one-quarter in large cities believed to be HIV-positive.

Advocates contrasted Ukraine's stance to that of the United Kingdom, where medical drug treatment methods are promoted, and the prevalence of HIV among injection drug users is 1.5 percent.

"This difference is down to early and widespread roll-out of methadone and needle exchange," said Gerry Stimson, executive director of the International Harm Reduction Association.

Advocates further charge that Ukraine's official crackdown is motivated by pressure from illegal drug dealers seeking to protect their business.

"Our sources tell us that local drug dealers are apparently unhappy with substitution therapy because they are losing customers," Skala said. "And with such high levels of corruption in the police, it was not long before officers acted on behalf of the drug dealers and took action against these doctors," he said.

Chemical smog worse than radioactive threat

Muscovites have been choking on a polluting haze since smog engulfed the city and fears have emerged that the spread of the fire smoke could bring worse still. The fallout area from Chernobyl could add radioactive particles to the poisonous soup currently hanging over the Russian capital.

The fires could send radioactive dust in areas affected by the 1986 disaster into the air, Nikolai Schmatkov from the World Wildlife Fund’s Russia office and Vladimir Chuprov of Russian Greenpeace said.

But nuclear energy scientists say the real danger comes not from radioactivity but from other fine particles, already present in the thick cloud. "The concentration of radioactive elements will be so negligible that the smoke itself will be many more times more dangerous than the radioactivity in it," Ravil Bakin of the Institute for Safe Development of Nuclear Energy warned. "Fine dust that contains chemical pollutants is the real danger and is much more poisonous than radioactivity."

400 kilometers to the East of the city about 2,000 army troops and emergency personnel have been fighting fires surrounding Russia's top nuclear research facility in Sarov.

The situation there was "tense but not critical," Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Bulgakov said after new robotic firefighting equipment was dispatched to the scene.

"There is no threat to the Federal Nuclear Center, and there is no reason for worry," Bulgakov said. The country's nuclear chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said all explosive and radioactive material had been moved off site as a precaution.

Mixing with the smoke from forest and peat bog fires are airborne pollutants such as carbon monoxide. They are four times higher than normal and the worst yet seen in Moscow, city health officials reported.

Israeli Suspected Of Running Ukraine Organ Trafficking Ring

TEL AVIV, Israel -- An Israeli man was arrested Friday for allegedly running an organ trafficking network in Ukraine, Army Radio reported.
The Israeli, whose name was not revealed, was arrested by Ukrainian police along with 12 other people.

According to the report, the network operated for over three years and recruited donors via the internet. Most of the donors were young women who agreed to sell a kidney for $10,000.

The organs were then allegedly transferred to Israelis in need of a kidney transplant, which cost over $200,000, said the head of the Ukrainian organization for combating human trafficking during a press conference following the arrests.

Ukrainian police estimated that the network made a gross sum of $40 million.

The facility in which the alleged operations for extracting the kidneys took place denied the allegations.

Moscow heat claims more victims

A Japanese tourist and four swimmers are the most recent victims of this year’s summer scorcher. The 75-year-old man died of heart failure while he was sight-seeing in the city centre.

The man collapsed and passed away on the ground by the Borovistky gate, a law enforcement spokesperson said on Monday. According to preliminary reports he died of acute heart failure, which could have been caused by the heat.

Meanwhile the swimming season officially opened at the beginning of June. As the mercury has continued to climb more and more people have taken to the Moscow waters, with some meeting a watery end. The Emergency Ministry Emercom announced that over the course of last month there were 70 incidents reported and 16 people drowned.

And Monday saw four people drowned on the city’s waterways, including a boy aged just nine.

None of the victims had been swimming at authorised areas, officials said.

So leaping into a river might not be the best way to beat the heat. Luckily, Russias chief medical officer Gennady Onishchenko has some handy hints for employers and employees, on how to avoid coming to harm.

And as if World Cup winning football isn’t enough, he’s looking for another Spanish success story in the form of a siesta.

Onishchenko suggested we should all take a page out of the Mediterranean country’s book and take it easy during the hottest hours of the day, between midday and 3 pm. He also recommended saving the most active tasks for the beginning and end of the day, when it is cooler.

Foot and Mouth comes to Russia

A pig farm in southern Russia has had its herd of 204 pigs destroyed, after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, the Emergency Ministry press service announced Thursday.

The carcass of a wild boar, which had died of the disease, was found in the area in May, prompting concerns about the spread of the highly infectious virus. Other wild boar in the area were culled, to contain the spread.

An outbreak of the disease in Britain in 2001 decimated farming communities and caused colossal financial losses.