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Victor Yushchenko, Ukraine's president. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has criticized the steps of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to combat the flu epidemic.

"I am getting the impression that the government is dealing with the problems helplessly. That it was absolutely unprepared for such a course of developments," he said at a Wednesday conference on the epidemiological situation in Ukraine.

He said that back in April he wrote a letter to the prime minister asking to set up a mixed commission to combat the flu epidemic. If the presidential instructions had been carried out in full then, Ukraine would have been better prepared for the epidemic today, he said.

"In fact the government and the health protection system cannot decide who has seasonal flu and who has swine flu. As a result a politician [Tymoshenko] becomes the chief sanitation doctor in Ukraine telling [people] what should be used," Yushchenko said.

He said that there are only two laboratories in Ukraine that can identify the A/H1N1 virus and no national flu center has been set up.

"Why nothing has been done? No laboratories, no statistics, no coordination Only PR everywhere," he said.

After the conference Yushchenko told journalists that he had appealed to the United Nations for a virological examination and the formation of a laboratory for anti-epidemic efforts.