Russia

CityBridge partnered with Dr. Alexei Maschan, director of the Institute for Pediatric Hematology at the Russian Central Children’s Hospital. The Institute was the referral center for all children throughout Russia who were suffering from severe hematological disorders.  Our goals were to keep a talented team intact—at a moment when their government could barely pay basic bills—and to improve survival rates for children suffering from routinely curable blood-based cancers and aplastic anemia.  Although our Russian doctors’ training, their facilities, and their chosen protocols were equivalent to any first-world treatment center, they lacked funding for regular access to medicine and supplies—items crucial  to achieve remission and cures. The existing scene was bleak: Limited chemotherapy drugs were divided among many needy children, IV bags were reused, and families brought their own food to supplement inadequate hospital nutrition.

When CityBridge began this partnership in 1997, children at the Institute were dying of hematological cancers consistently cured in the first world.  By working to provide regular access to medicines and supplies, providing salary supplements for staff, and designing training workshops for doctors throughout the country, outcomes for children treated at this center have approached (and may soon meet) Western standards for cures.  In total, nearly 200 children have been treated, with mortality rates dropping from 23% to 5%.  On the training front, 32 educational sessions were held across the country, educating nearly 2600 doctors and nurses on aplastic anemia and its treatment options. CityBridge always conceived of this project as a “stop-gap”—a way to keep intact a group of exceptionally talented doctors, who already knew what to do,  until their own country could once again afford to provide for seriously ill children. In 2005, the Russian government and local philanthropic organizations took over the entirety of the funding of the Institute of Pediatric Hematology.