Charity project to stop

  • 2001-05-24
  • BNS
TALLINN - Seven-month-old baby Eero Jurgenson, born with a serious cardiac defect, returned from an operation in Germany on May 15. He may be one of the last Estonian children to be operated on at the Charite Clinic in Berlin, head of the German-Estonian joint project Dr. Friedrich Koehler admitted.

If Estonia fails to show interest in the Tartu University clinic – a partner in the project – it will mean the death of about 25 children born with a similar defect within a year, Koehler told the daily Postimees. "It's a whole class of children who could live," Koehler said.

He said the whole project is under serious threat, because unless the university clinic submits a development program as required, and the Estonian Sick Fund continues to pay only a part of the expenses, the German government will refuse to finance the project.

"The money will be given to Russia and the project will be over by the end of the year," Koehler said, adding that the project's budget had already been cut.

Koehler said Estonian doctors often ask how they can benefit from the project.

Eve Int, head of the Partnership for Heart project of Humboldt University's Charite Clinic and the Tartu University clinic, rejected the German project leader's warnings. She said Estonian doctors were very much interested in the project and wanted experience and knowledge from their German colleagues.

But Int admitted Estonia did not have a concrete development program to help these children. An average of 25 children with very bad heart defects are born every year and it is not possible in Estonia to acquire the experience German doctors have, she said.

Mati Rass, head of the clinic's cardiac department, said Estonian doctors never ask what they get out of helping the children. "This is elementary medical ethics. We'd never ask that," Rass said.

Int said that Koehler may have misunderstood them. "We have frequently asked them with gratitude what they get out of it," she said.

Koehler said successful operations on Eero and three-year-old Rando Hinn are vivid proof of the importance of the Estonian-German project.

"They wouldn't have lived more than four weeks, but now Rando is at home and also Eero will fly back soon," Koehler said on May 15. The boys will need other operations, but they can lead full lives.

"Well, they may never become astronauts," Koehler said.

Koehler said each operation cost 100,000 Deutschemarks, or 800,000 kroons ($44,700), but the Estonian Sick Fund only agreed to pay 240,000 kroons for Eero and Rando each, leaving German surgeons to work with no pay.

"They are real super-surgeons, who performed the operations at the expense of their time off and according to plans will do it at least twice more, but there's a limit somewhere," said Kohler, adding that the Sick Fund refused to pay also for the parents' air fares, which were paid for by the Pfizer pharmaceutical company.

"It's a partnership, after all, and in a partnership both parties have their obligations," Koehler underlined.

Kaidi Tingas, a spokswoman for the Estonian Sick Fund, said it is a major misunderstanding, because the Sick Fund has supported the project and wants to finance it also in the future.

"But the present medical insurance law does not permit us to pay transport costs," she added.

Int said that Estonian doctors take part in the project in their own free time. "We haven't earned a cent, and this has not been the aim," she said.

But Int added that the Estonian Sick Fund and the Social Affairs Ministry should demonstrate their support for the project.