No AIDS in Turkmenistan
Topic: Health, Education, Social

1 December 2006. Turkmenistan, along with the whole world community,  marked the World AIDS Day declared in 1988 with the aim of attracting attention to humankind's major problem. This year, it was marked with a slogan "Stop AIDS. Keep the promise. "A great number of outreach activities, educational events, contests, meetings and seminars held today with the participation of young people throughout the country were devoted to combating and preventing HIV/AIDS. The events were attended by officials from health and power-wielding agencies coordinating work with risk group people.

 

According to statistics, Turkmenistan remains one of the few countries of the world in which AIDS spread risk rate is almost equal to zero. The fact that there is almost no HIV sufferers in Turkmenistan is, in a sense, a unique achievement, which has been scored thanks to wide-scale preventive work carried out in the country at the initiative of President Saparmyrat Niyazov]. This gives a strong impetus to further development of joint programmes and projects in this area.

The national Turkmen AIDS/HIV prevention programme adopted in September 1999 and the law "On the prevention of diseases caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)", which require a precise state policy in this direction, clearly demonstrate the significance being attached by the government to preventing AIDS and sexually- transmitted diseases. In this regard, it is necessary to note that the local authorities, state and health agencies, NGOs and international organizations are closely collaborating and conducting active outreach work everywhere in order to step up moral and sexual education among people.

"Neytralniy Turkmenistan" newspaper

Green Light for Children's Health Centre near Ashgabat
Topic: Health, Education, Social
Turkish Polimeks Gets US $ 11.7 Mln Contract in Turkmenistan

Ashgabat, 23 August 2005 (nCa) --- President Niyazov signed Monday a resolution, authorizing the Central Bank of Turkmenistan to sign a contract with the Turkish company Polimeks for construction of a children’s health and recreation centre.

The health centre would be built in Gokdere settlement near Ashgabat.

With capacity to accommodate 365 children simultaneously, the centre would cost US $ 11.799 million including taxes.

Construction work should start in September 2005 and the centre should be ready by October 2006.

Childern's Park of Turkmen Tales Will Open in Ashgabat Next Year
Topic: Health, Education, Social
26 July 2005. About one year is left before opening a unique children’s park of sideshows in Ashgabat and construction operations are at full swing at the area of 33 hectares. In autumn the specialists of the Turkish company Gap Insaat will start planting trees and shrubs and purchasing equipment for the sideshows. The largest park in the region called the World of Turkmen Fairy-Tales (its total sum is 50 million US dollars) is being constructed by the order of the Ministry of Education of Turkmenistan and is being financed from the State monetary reserve.

According to the architects’ design the main natural and climatic zones of Turkmenistan will be presented in miniature. The playgrounds of the entertaining complex will be surrounded with the reduced copies of the Kopetdag Mountains, the Karakum Desert, the Amudarya and the Karakum River. In that part of the park dozens of sideshows meeting the international standards of safety will be installed. There will be three-dimensional images of the personages of Turkmen fairy-tales and representatives of the vegetable kingdom of Turkmenistan everywhere.

The visitors of the World of Turkmen Fairy-Tales will have a great choice. They will be able to ride various merry-go-rounds and a big dipper, to make a trip along the river or visit a gallery of laser effect. There will be a special playground for small children; the bigger children will be able to visit pavilions with videogames and a covered arcade. The parent will spend time playing billiards, darts, or bowling.

Trees, shrubs and flowers will grow everywhere; there will be benches, arbours, fountains and original lamps along the paths. Cafes, rental agencies, shops and photo studios will also work there. The technical services and administration of the park will occupy a two-storeyed building with the total area of 7,000 square metres.

That district of the city will have changed beyond recognition by the 15th anniversary of independence and it will be a favourite place of rest. Close to the World of Turkmen Fairy-Tales a puppet show will work, an aquatic complex will be opened and the Ashgabat River with a park zone along its banks will stretch to the south of the park.

State Information Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH)

Winter Sports Complex (Ice Palace) Under Construction in Ashgabat
Topic: Health, Education, Social
24 July 2005. In the chronicles of our life, new grandiose buildings embodying unprecedented projects and the boldest plans are being realised. Especially, it concerns our fine white-marble capital where every new bulding is an event bringing new unique features and magnificence to its look.

The opening of the Ice Palace in 2006 being constructed by the French company Bouygues Batimant International in the southern district of Ashgabat will be such an event for the people of Ashgabat and all visitors of the capital. The customer of the project is the Turkmenenergogurlushyk Concern of the Ministry of Energy and Industry of Turkmenistan.

The Ice Palace will occupy the area of 18,850 square metres. The new sports complex will have all the opportunities for organising competitions in hockey, skating, figure skating and various ice shows.

The tribunes of the palace are designed for 1,000 spectators. Besides the administrative and functional premises, the children’s playground, first-aid post, buffet and shops will be there too. The facade of the Ice Palace covered with white marble and toned glass is faced the north. The entrances from Archabil Avenue and also a pedestrian subway will lead to it.

At present, construction of the project where more than two hundred Turkmen and foreign specialists work is carried out at a rapid pace. Now, erection of the ground floor of the building and construction of engineering-communication networks are being carried out.

Aysoltan BAKIEVA
Turkmenistan: the Golden Age

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