Bulgaria’s healthcare may be infected by the plague of lack of money, but at least some hospitals will find meaning to feast on high-tech and expensive equipment for treating cancer. Linear accelerators for radiotherapy will be received by three hospitals – University Hospital Queen Johanna, ISUL, the Specialized Hospital for Active Treatment of Cancer Dr. Mark A. Markov, and multi-profile St. Marina in Varna. In Burgas, Veliko Tarnovo and Stara Zagora oncological complex structures have already been delivered and work for the same purposes, the equipment being worth in total over 13 million levs. The large-scale investment scheme is under „Support for reconstruction, renovation and equipping of state medical and health facilities in urban areas“ included in the EU operational programme Regional Development.
Certainly among the most satisfied are specialists in ISUL. The hospital previously had a linear accelerator of the last generation, but it was consistently overused, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars extra payments for spare parts planning and system use. Moreover, the waiting list for radiotherapy is filled for about a month ahead.
Capital city’s Oncology Hospital is not a better alternative as for intervention there people wait for two months because the list includes over 1,200 people. However, the hospital got a new gamma camera Siemens for 2 million levs, which performs more precise imaging with minimal usage of isotopes and shorter stay of patients. It can serve up to 20 people a day.
A future oncology centre is the sea capital Varna, where the health department and the local community have ordered and are waiting for new equipment worth 8.2 million levs in two hospitals. For several months the citizens of Burgas have been treated by highest class equipment of the Swedish company Elekta. It is called Agility and features a cutting-edge technology to locate and destroy the cancer cells of the patient. Worldwide, there are only a dozen similar devices installed and ready for operation. Experts point out that it may be functional and cuttign-edge for another 15 years, as there is a possibility to upgrade. The technique is served by three doctors, four medical physicists, an engineer physicist, seven lab workers and two nurses.
Since the beginning of 2014 cancer-stricken patients in four regions – Stara Zagora, Sliven, Haskovo and Kardzhali – have been receiving advanced therapy in the new department of radiation oncology centre at the complex in Stara Zagora, where the state had invested a total of 6.66 million levs.
The second for Bulgaria brachytherapy apparatus will be used at the Centre for Oncology in Veliko Tarnovo. In the renovated clinic they will have another similar device for radiotherapy. The public tender for the supply has already been won by Solomed who suggested price of 4.81 million levs without VAT. Subcontractors on the project are Siemens, Euromed-Sofia and Canberra Packard Bulgaria. The specialized equipment is to be used for people with cancer of the cervix or prostate cancer in order to avoid having to make the irradiation in the skin, often resulting in damage to adjacent organs.
In Bulgaria, together with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia, cancer patients (the registered ones are over 300,000 people) have the shortest survival rate. Only 29% of men with cancer survive five years of the detection of the disease, while for women the picture is slightly better.
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