Kharkiv doctors have met with German Charite doctor Lutz Harms, who is in charge of the treatment of former Ukrainian Premier Yulia Tymoshenko at Central Clinical Hospital No. 5 in Kharkiv.
The ex-premier’s defense lawyer, Serhiy Vlasenko, was also present at the meeting.
“He [Dr. Harms] said that he will be accompanied by Vlasenko, and that’s all,” Chief of Kharkiv Regional Clinical Hospital Bohdan Fedak said on Tuesday.
Fedak said he was surprised by the presence of Vlasenko at the meeting, as the doctors were planning to discuss “only medically related issues.”
“We were not going to discuss medicine-related issues in the presence of outsiders… We were going to talk mainly about a specific pathology, as well as discuss the situation in general. Moreover, the professors that attended the meeting wanted make their proposals, outline their opinions, and suggest additional methods of treatment and examination. It’s obvious that they did not want to listen to our experts, who are by the way experts of high class and of the world level… At least six of the people that were present in the meeting room have higher qualification that the [German] doctor – academicians and doctors that do the most difficult surgery were present there,” Fedak said.
He also noted that Dr. Harms gave “rather strange answers” to many questions asked by Kharkiv doctors.
“I may not comment on it, as it’s related to the diagnosis and treatment… We never received an answer to a question about his task here. We asked how often they examine patients at German clinics, and he said that they do this every day. Meanwhile, he comes once every two weeks,” Fedak said.
Fedak added that 13 people, including seven professors and doctors of science, took part in the meeting.
He failed to answer whether Kharkiv doctors will meet with Harms or other Charite Clinic doctors in future.
“I think that such conversations have sense in case both sides want to discuss medicine-related issues, and if one side says that it would not give us more information than they want to and only in the presence of the lawyer, we should say goodbye to them,” Fedak said.
As reported, on July 9 Director of the Professor M. Sytenko Institute of Spine and Joint Pathology (Kharkiv) Mykola Korzh said that the German doctors do nothing but lobby for the political interests of Tymoshenko.
On behalf of the Kharkiv doctors, Fedak invited Harms to hold a meeting to discuss the treatment procedure of Tymoshenko. Harms agreed to meet with the colleagues only if his patient agrees to it.
Pechersky District Court in Kyiv found Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of office in signing gas supply agreements with Russia in 2009 and sentenced her to seven years in prison on October 11, 2011. She started serving her prison term at a Kharkiv-based penitentiary at the end of December 2011.
