Treatment and Consultation Centre of Turkmenistan: Services at Highest International Level
Topic: Health, Education, Social
12 July 2005. The Treatment and Consultation Centre of Turkmenistan is the first large patient care institution established in Turkmenistan during the years of independence. In the context of the coming reforms of the national health care it was established not only as the national leading clinic but also as that of the new type providing medical services at the highest international levels. The newly independent state made solid investments to supply the firstling with the up-to-date medical equipment.
To date, the Centre includes 34 departments; 18 of them are in-patient and 16 are subsidiary (admission department, consultative polyclinics, department of functional diagnostics, laboratories, angio-X-ray department and others). The clinic is structured in accordance with the international standards. The clinic includes nine surgical departments in which the surgeons operate on almost all kinds of pathology. Over 40 operations can be performed in 11 operating rooms every day. 8,462 operations were performed last year. To imagine the scope of the clinic it is enough to say that 1,049 people work there, 279 of whom are physicians.
The Centre provides consultative and medical assistance to the people of Turkmenistan who visit the Centre on their own initiative or the patient referrals to treatment irrespective of the place of residence.
For the convenience of patients The Burn Department has no analogy in the country. The 25-bedded department can take the patients suffering from all kinds of burns: thermal, chemical and electrical. The serious patients are transported by air from the velayats.
“In the department we created maximum comfort to provide high-quality treatment and relieve the patients from pain. First of all, we use 10 multifunctional air beds produced by the Japanese leading companies,” A. Atamuradov, Head of the Burn Department, tells. “A patient can painlessly change the body positions; it prevents a bedsore, pneumonia and other post burn complications.
A patient is transported to a Clinitron multifunctional bed (produced by Russia and France) to dry wounds. The mattress is filled with 250 kg of sand warmed up by airflow by 40 degree. To disinfect the burning wounds the patients undergo the course of quartz physiotherapy procedures and take Sakay rehabilitations baths (Japan).”
Like the magicians The department of plastic and reconstructive surgery headed by H. Myatiev, Candidate of Medicine, senior physician, is the only one in Turkmenistan. The surgeons working at the Centre are like the magicians. They hold the certificates of authorship and inventor’s certificates including the international ones (Russia, Germany). The scope of the medical services rendered to the people of Turkmenistan is steadily expanded.
Every day the surgeons perform 4-5 operations. Most of the patients applying for medical assistance to the Centre suffer from the burning injuries. Their problems are solved by transplanting skin and post-burn contractures caused by the permanent scars that restrict the functions of the joints.
The remedial nose surgical procedure restoring the functions of the nose and improving the nose shape is one of the new operations performed at the Centre.
Development of the method of surgical correction of facial paralysis is a great achievement of the specialists of the Centre. This operation helps to restore the visual function, mimics and facial symmetry.
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and … Van Gogh The department of cardiopulmonary resuscitation opened in 1996 is the first resuscitation department in Turkmenistan providing medical services in compliance with the best international standards. It supplemented two other resuscitation departments of the Centre – the department of anesthesia and resuscitation and the department of extracorporal hemodialysis (hemodialyser).
The necessity of placing the Centre on such a level was stipulated by the Health State Programme. Maximum of comfort is created for the patients in six cubicles. A cubicle is equipped with the centralised oxygen and air supply panel, a vacuum unit, a medical ventilation apparatus produced by the Puritan Bennet Company (the USA) and a monitor reading all vitally important indices. The apparatus is equipped with the alarm system that immediately responses to any changes beyond allowable norms. The computers save the information monitoring the course of disease during three days.
The department amazes not only with the up-to-date equipment, comfort, high quality of medical aid and services but also the interior. The walls of the department are decorated with the reproductions of Van Gogh’s pictures.
“Vincent Van Gogh suffered from cardiac insufficiency,” M. Aytmamedov, head of the department tells. “The specialists noted that chrome was a prevailing colour in Gogh’s pictures. The physicians all over the world think that this colour produced a positive effect on the patients. When the patients are watching Van Gogh’s pictures they feel the painter’s intuitive striving to find the way out of the state disease.
Maximum comfort was created for the visitors, too. They can receive necessary information in a special room. He is not allowed to the ward but he can speak with the patients via the special interphone system.
The story about three electro-optical transducers (EOT) The President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov took part in the opening ceremony of the department of cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the Treatment and Consultation Centre. Addressing to the specialists of the Centre the President asked them what they would like to have to improve the quality of medical services. They asked for an electro-optical transducer. Thus, three electro-optical transducers were supplied to the department.
“This unit,” A. Rejepov, Head of the department tells, “takes 95 percent of irradiation projecting the sharp images on the monitor. We use the transducers for the diagnostic as well as for surgical purposes while removing gallstones and renal calculi, approximating bone fragments, removing foreign bodies and operating spinal column.
The advantages of the apparatus are that of the big memory saving the indices of the state of a patient’s health and images. By using the apparatus we can save on costs for expensive X-ray films and developing chemicals, the premises of a photolaboratory and archives.
Since 1997 the specialists of our department have been using a Philips X-ray unit for express diagnostics of trauma patients. One of the rooms is specified for dental X-ray diagnosis. The portable X-ray units allow diagnosing the bed-ridden patients in the wards.
Diagnostics is similar to exploration The department of functional diagnostics supplied with up-to-date medical equipment has been rendering services since the opening of the Treatment and Consultation Centre of Turkmenistan. Under the supervision of J. Atdekova, the head of the department, the groups of the highly qualified physicians detect the patients’ diseases as well as define the degree of pathological process and detect the pathology of internal organs and systems on the latent stages. The functional diagnostic techniques provide the wide opportunities to take timely preventive measures.
The latest news: some days ago Sonoc-7500 ultrasound scanner produced by the Philips Company was supplied to the department. It allows conducting necessary investigation of heart and internal organs, vessels and soft tissues, endocrine glands and joints.
For the first time in Turkmenistan the MR-image room was opened at the Centre in 1997. Since that time 34,000 patients have undergone the magnetic resonance imaging procedures. This is the latest radiological technique that allows receiving the multi-projection layer-by-layer images of all organs. The patients undergo the magnetic resonance imaging procedures on the recommendation of the specialists of the Centre as well as other clinics of Turkmenistan.
Tamara GLAZUNOVA
Photo H. MAGADOV
Turkmenistan: the Golden Age
Posted by countryturkmenistan
at 2:22 PM
Updated: Thursday, 21 July 2005 2:27 PM