You're reading: Yushchenko addresses nation, journalists about flu epidemic

Obviously we are facing a difficult situation and today the effective assessment, accurate information on the sickness rate in not only the three regions but in the whole of Ukraine is an important issue.

I have instructed the Minister for Health to develop a unified database, to prepare the official statistics, which would in real time inform primarily the Ministry of Health, the Prime Minister and the Government on the situation with the epidemic in all regions of Ukraine. Unfortunately there was no such database before today. We need to conduct the cumulative, effective monitoring.

We have a Flu Center, which employs only one person.

My request of May to the Prime Minister to allocate funds to establish a lab, to "arm" us in the situation, when the world is smitten by the epidemic of this flu, to date has not been answered. That is why only one person is working in the Flu Center. This is the center, which is supposed to conduct monitoring in whole of Ukraine, the center, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry for Health and of the Government. I have addressed the Prime Minister with the request to urgently allocate appropriate funds – 50 million hryvnyas for the center to function.

So, the first question is the fullness of the information and establishment of full control over spreading of respiratory desists over the territory of Ukraine, the regime of real informing of the public per region and the country as the whole.

Separately I have instructed Regional Administrations to established info-centers for the population of every region to avoid panic or disinformation.

Question number two, which I think is the result of failures in the question number one, particularly the failure to establish the Flu Center, is determining the type of the virus. Today only one thing pulls the Health Ministry and effective system of actions back – determining the type of the virus. In many cases this question remains unanswered. There are even experts, who suppose it is another modified virus – the differentiated virus between the "bird flu" and the "pig flu". But only the operative analysis would answer that. The flu, which the risk group is suffering from, should be identified.

Yesterday I have instructed the Ministry of Health to formulate and present to the meeting of the Government a real action plan, which the entire government team, all local authorities and local government are to be guided by. That means the Ministry should review the national pandemic plan and, taking into account current challenges, to bind it to specific territories and Ukraine in general. The Health Ministry should clearly formulate mandatory recommendations that should guide the citizens of Ukraine, specialists and experts.

Further – be it premises restrictions, or the introduction of quarantine restrictions, or preventive measures, or vaccination, or isolation – it should be a part of a single national Ukrainian plan, which I hope I will hear at today’s extraordinary session of the NSDC dedicated to the issue. The plan should include a set of quarantine measures and I will get an expert opinion on the measures already undertaken by the Government. Whether they are sufficient, or whether the process should be developed and extended. The measures we are to apply at the border, the procedure of citizens’ and transport movement between the areas. The supervision over full provision of the population with remedies. And if something is missing, buying and allocating it to the appropriate health care facilities. Providing medical departments with the number of beds necessary in case of the worst possible scenarios. I have instructed the Minister of Defense to mobilize all operational mobile hospitals so they could be deployed tomorrow in the areas, where they are needed the most.

The supply of medicines that we currently have allows us to provide help to all those in need. I have addressed international institutions and partner countries so if the situation develops in such a manner and with such dynamics that it would threaten our capabilities, we will certainly get the required amount of drugs needed for treatment and prevention. At present the required number of medicines has been distributed to the affected people – this is the latest report of the Health Minister.

I am sure we will be able to deal with this disaster.

I would like to separately address you, dear journalists, because objective and responsible information, I think, helps the country and specialists to deal with this problem. So I ask you to refrain from agitating the country with unverified information and from using the information of dubious nature and the information that is untrue. More than ever before we now must be Ukrainians, help the nation with full responsibility to meet this problem, have a single national plan, support each other. Obviously, in the next couple of days we will assess why the epidemic was more acute in Ukraine than in any other country of European community.

Full Ukrainian text can be read here.