Dear friends and partners,
I hope most of you are having your summer holidays now but will find a few minutes to read the following information about the “INTERFAMILY” Clinic’s recent activities.
The war in Ukraine is still going on and more and more IDPs replenish the population of Uzhhorod which is still the relatively safest part of the country.
As you know our “INTERFAMILY” Clinic accepted international donations from international sponsors, and family doctors from all over the world and was partly supported by the international organization “Doctors Without Borders”. With this help our clinic managed to survive during the last 8 months! Isn’t it our great mutual achievement? At the end of June “Doctors without Borders” will no longer be able to support our clinic. We still have some funds previously collected from your generous donations and will use them to cover the extra expenses in the coming months.
We are doing our best to increase the number of officially registered patients in order to get the state capitation and accordingly achieve financial sustainability (we are aiming for 3000 assigned patients but meanwhile we have only 700 patients officially assigned to the clinic). Primary care will remain free at the clinic starting from July 2023 but consultations of specialists and lab services will be paid for the patients. Anyway, IDPs will get a 50% discount for the specialists’ consultations and investigations.
-Within this project, in April 2023, having got the invitation from our dear Slovenian colleges, members of EURACT, three teaching doctors of the clinic visited the city of Ljubljana in Slovenia to establish contacts with Slovenian colleagues and to take courses on Ultrasound Diagnostics in the practice of a family doctor.
-As a head of the family medicine and outpatient care department and the director of the clinic, Pavlo Kolesnyk conducted a training Leonardo 1 course for FM teachers of Slovakia and the Czech Republic in Bratislava.
Our course participants collected 120 kg of humanitarian aid which has been delivered and stored for further transportation in Trebisov (Slovakia). Our Slovakian colleges provide us with free storage of humanitarian goods.
Pavlo Kolensyk together with his British partners Michael Harris and Gordon Tailor conducted a course B of the ABC course for early career family medicine researchers in Budapest. His friends from Hungary Peter Vajer and Peter Totza helped him to get humanitarian aid and some medical supplies to equip the Interfamily clinic.
-This month, a delegation of family medicine teachers from the InterFamily clinic and the Department of Family Medicine and Ambulatory Care visited Geneva, Switzerland, to participate in a conference for family medicine teachers and to network with the Swiss community. They presented a poster about the clinic activities and made many new links for further activities there. They were kindly hosted and welcomed by the EURACT national representative from Switzerland.
At the same time, in June 2023, a well-known professor of family medicine from the city of Bas, in Great Britain, Michael Harris, visited Uzhhorod. He participated in inpatient consultations at the “INTERFAMILY” clinic, had a meeting with UzhNU teachers and students and, interns, and then took part as a speaker at a Conference for family doctors from all over Ukraine in Mukachevo.
We hope that this initiative of the Department of Family Medicine and Ambulatory Care and the “INTERFAMILY” Training Clinic on the exchange of experts will continue and we are welcoming new foreign experts to Ukraine and will send the members of our staff to gain experience from European professionals abroad.
Last month the staff of the clinic took part in the activities dedicated to the World Melanoma Day. Young residents, and clinic assistants passed the training in melanoma early detection conducted by the dermatologist of the clinic. Tents with advertisements to passing the free early diagnostics were allocated in the city center: anyone could undergo an initial express examination of suspicious lesions on the skin followed by an examination by a well-known dermatologist on the basis of the “INTERFAMILY” Clinic. This became a good promotion of the clinic and a perfect possibility for the young assistants to increase their confidence in clinical decision- making.
3.Finally a Director of the clinic, Pavlo Kolesnyk a well-known doctor and volunteer from Uzhgorod, received the prestigious title of WONCA Europe five-star doctor at the 28th WONCA Europe Conference 2023 in Brussels. We consider this award as a high rating of the activities of all our friends and partners, the same as of the entire staff of the “INTERFAMILY” clinic.
We are sure that all this will approximate the victory of Ukraine against the Russian aggressors!
