The doctors from the Moscow detention facility where Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko is kept have promised their Ukrainian colleagues to follow all their recommendations on helping Savchenko end her hunger strike, Natalya Kharchenko, a gastroenterologist and an expert with the Ukrainian Health Ministry, has said.
“We have generally reached an understanding with the prison doctors. They have promised to fulfill all our requests and follow our recommendations,” she told a briefing in Kyiv on March 16.
Kharchenko also said the Ukrainian doctors were able to talk to Savchenko in the presence of Russian law enforcement officers and examine her on March 14.
“We were given time and documents. The documents were very detailed. Then we examined Nadia. Then we discussed the plan of actions and the proposals that we think will help Nadia end her hunger strike. Generally, we reached an understanding with the Russian doctors. The tactics that used before our visit were right,” she said.
Andriy Strokan, an anesthesiologist and deputy head doctor on medical issues at the clinical hospital Feofania, said Savchenko’s condition is generally satisfactory.
“Our commission evaluated her condition as relatively satisfactory. Judging by the lab tests that were provided to us, everything is stable. I can’t disclose any other information because we don’t have any consent,” he said.
The doctors said a hunger strike and the period of ending it involve a difficult nervous state, but the pilot’s psychological state is normal and she “keeps the situation under control and knows what she is doing.”
“We have adjusted the food she is getting and we have made a schedule. If everything goes as we plan, Nadia will be fine,” Kharchenko said.
The doctors also said their visit was organized and financed by the Ukrainian Health Ministry.
