Serving People, Improving Health Project: cardiac care specialists in Kovel start using new angiography equipment

The Kovel Central District Hospital was equipped with a new modern X-ray Angiography system, and the hospital staff has already started using it to deliver timely, high quality care to patients. The new equipment, worth a total of 600,000 US dollars, was purchased and delivered to the Kovel Central District Hospital under the Serving People, Improving Health joint project of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine with the World Bank.

The use of this equipment will contribute to an increase in the accurate and timely diagnosis of patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular conditions, and will also allow healthcare specialists to localize the pathology in a short period of time, and to choose the best course of treatment.

Free coronary angiography is to be provided to all inhabitants of Kovel and the nearby districts.

The installation of this equipment in the healthcare facility that is part of the Kovel Hospital District, which serves about 375,000 of the residents of Volyn oblast, is not a luxury but a requirement of time.

The new angiography equipment will allow specialists to perform about 720-840 angiography procedures, including coronary angiography, and about 200 stent placements every year. This means that local cardiac care specialists will be able to save hundreds of lives of the residents of Kovel and the nearby settlements.

Deputy Minister of Health of Ukraine Oleksandr Linchevskyi, who was present at the opening ceremony in Kovel, emphasized that "any innovation improving the hospital quality and efficiency is a group effort, so the credit for equipping the hospital with this technology should go to all people who have contributed in one way or another to the project implementation".

"The development of a network of regional reperfusion centers has been one of the priorities for Ukraine’s Government and Health Ministry for over 2 years now. This program has already yielded the first results: it allowed us to save 420 more lives in 2017, compared to 2015. The coordinated efforts of the government, the Ministry's team, our partners, local authorities, hospital managers, healthcare professionals, constructors and all non-indifferent citizens, which are aimed at building and developing regional reperfusion centers, contribute to saving many lives of patients with acute myocardial infarction, as well as to guaranteeing free care in emergency cases, and to ensuring delivery of high quality care in line with modern standards," noted Oleksandr Linchevskyi.

In total, three angiographs were purchased and delivered to the largest hospitals in Volyn oblast within the framework of the ‘Improving medical care to patients with the circulatory system diseases in the Volyn region’ subproject, in particular one angiograph for the Kovel Central District Hospital, one – for the Lutsk City Hospital, and the third one – for the Volyn Regional Clinical Hospital.

It is worth noting that according to health statistics as of 2017, the circulatory system diseases rank first (77% of cases) in the regional mortality structure, which makes these diseases the most critical public health problem in Volyn oblast. In view of the high mortality from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and increasing disability rates, the key objective of the Serving People, Improving Health subproject in Volyn oblast is to reduce high disability and mortality from these diseases by improving the quality of diagnosis and care delivered by local providers.