One of Russia's leading oncology centers is suffering from a lack of medicine. The Cancer Treatment Center in the Siberian city of Kyzyl, in the Russian republic of Tuva, is well known for its effective methods of treating cancer patients.
But the chief of the center's chemotherapy department, Marina Fedenko, told RFE/RL's Russian Service today that the center gets only one-tenth of the pharmaceutical products it needs for treating cancer patients for one year.
Veronika Davaa of Tuva's Health Protection Ministry told RFE/RL that all of the medicine is distributed in the regions and republics of the Russian Federation by federal agencies and that it is very hard to influence the distributor's decisions.