You're reading: Neurosurgeon: Tymoshenko treated in Germany at own expense

Doctors at the Charite Clinic in Berlin have performed the first successful surgery to restore the health of Batkivschyna party leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, after her prolonged absence of a proper treatment required at the acute stage of her disease. 

“German doctors have conducted the first low-invasive intervention aimed at blockading the affected nerve endings. This is seen as one surgical manipulation. It should be held very accurately and target precisely at the affected endings. It can only be held in-patient and only by specialists skilled in this technology,” Ukraine’s former health minister and neurosurgeon Prof. Mykola Polyschuk said, according to Tymoshenko’s Web site.

It is not ruled out that the manipulation will have to be repeated, and only then can it be decided whether Tymoshenko needs surgery, the ex-minister said.

The rehabilitation of a patient after such surgical interventions lasts up to two weeks depending on their body’s reaction, he said. “Rehabilitation could be both in-patient and out-patient. In case of a chronic problems, the rehabilitation stage could take longer. However, judging from the data at my disposal, the process has been successful and time will tell how further treatment should be held,” he added.

Tymoshenko is being treated at a Berlin clinic at her family’s expense, Polyschuk said. “There are no public or other funds. They are paying for the treatment themselves. Yulia Tymoshenko has agreed to being treated at a clinic that she trusts.”

In Germany, medical treatment costs the same for both Germans and foreigners but less than elsewhere in Europe, he said.

Tymoshenko, was sentenced to a seven-year prison term in 2011 and freed by Maidan protestors in February 2013. She has been undergoing medical treatment at Charite Clinic in Berlin since March 8. The clinic’s doctors have been examining and treating Tymoshenko since February 2012 at the Kharkiv hospital N5 where she had been moved from the Kachanivska prison. Later the clinic offered to continue treatment in Germany.