Current Newsletter
January 2008
Dear Friends and Supporters:
Now that the situation in Chechnya has taken a turn for the better, I was able to spend two months in Grozny, assessing the medical situation there. During that time, two ICCC board members -- Ruth and Nicholas Daniloff -- visited me in Grozny . They were able to see for themselves the conditions in the hospitals, and how the ICCC money was being spent. See Ruth Daniloff’s Boston Globe article for her general impressions of Chechnya.
We visited the Grozny Neurological Hospital which has received some funding from the government to reconstruct the building. At the School for the Blind we also found that the buildings had been reconstructed and that they had heat. Khava Karimova, the head of the Blind Association in Chechnya, is working to identify blind and deaf children throughout the republic so that they might receive help. We have invited a specialist from the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston to visit, too. The Perkins School is one of the world’s leading specialists on special education for blind and deafblind children so that they can become members of society.
My conclusions after two months in Chechnya is that the aftermath of war is as bad as war itself. Behind the reconstruction which is taking place in the country lie terrible medical problems. Along with the soaring birth rate are soaring birth defects which are largely a result of the war and a contaminated environment. Each morning while in Grozny I went to the 9th City Hospital to consult with desperate parents whose children suffered from various defects -- cleft palates, hare lips, Down Syndrome -- as well as injuries such as serious burns. In Chechnya there are no specialist in birth defects, and pre-natal care is practically non-existant. The hospitals do not have basic diagnostic equipment such as ultra sound or x-ray machines. And despite the beginnings of reconstruction, hospital buildings are still in terrible shape -- while I was doing my consultations with children water was dripping from the ceiling.
Working with the international organization, Operation Smile, which operates on children with cleft plates and hare lips around the world, I identified 20 Chechen children in need of operations and traveled with them by bus to the southern Russian city of Taganrog. There I joined a team of international surgeon to carry out the operations on them. After the surgeries, the children, their mothers, and I returned by bus to Grozny, and for the next month I was able to visit each child frequently, and ensured that they were doing well before I had to return to Boston. Next September Operation Smile has agreed to hold one of their mission in Chechnya. with surgeons from the U.S. participating.
In addition to helping with medical equipment, we believe that one of the most important ways for the ICCC to help children in Chechnya is to introduce the medical profession to information on the Internet. Most doctors don’t even have computers let alone know how to use them. For this reason, I am trying to raise funds for an Internet medical center in Grozny which would allow medical personnel access to the field of medicine throughout the world.
Once more, I want to thank every one for their support. I want you to know I met so many people in Chechnya who expressed appreciation for our help. They were touched that Americans thought of them, even as the United States pursue its war in Iraq
With many thanks and all best wishes for the New Year,
Dr. Khassan Baiev, Chairman
Previous Newsletters
September 2007
Three New Projects in Store for Rebuilding Chechnya's Infrastructure
Dear Friends and Supporters:
The ICCC plans to continue small grants for poor families who have adopted orphans. Our flour supply program has been a great success and we plan to keep it going.
Since my last five week trip to Chechnya (Newsletter, March 2007), I have given increasing thought to the medical catastrophe which is my homeland. The ICCC is deeply concerned about the high number of children with birth defects. Some 40,000 children were killed during the war – an appalling figure for a total population of about one million. That figure tends to distract us from thinking about the children who were maimed or injured during the fighting. In addition, many children are being born with birth defects which are believed to be the result of the high levels of environmental contamination. The latest figures from Chechnya show one child in three is born with some kind of defect or disability.
On the positive side, I can report the following:
Operation Smile: I have been studying the latest techniques in reconstructive surgery at Children’s Hospital in Boston. In May, I undertook a two-week training program with Operation Smile – the American group of international surgeons who fly around the world fixing hare lips and cleft palates. In November, I will go back to Chechnya to identify 20 children with such defects and organize for them to be treated by the Operation Smile surgeons. I will perform some of the surgeries myself.
Medical instruments: The shortage of medical supplies affects the medical help available for the children in Chechnya. The need is very great. Please know that we seek the following and will be grateful for any help you can give in acquiring: operating tables, electro-surgical generators, anesthesia machines, and cranio-maxillofacial instruments.
The digital divide: The more time I spend observing operations in Boston hospitals, the more I realize we need to give Chechen doctors and health workers access to the kind of instant information available in advanced industrial nations through the Internet. In Chechnya many health workers don’t have computers and don’t know how to use them. In an effort to solve this problem, the ICCC is applying for grants from major foundations for the following projects:
- A Medical Consultative Center in Grozny: This center would provide high speed links to medical resources on the Internet. Unfortunately, the majority of doctors in Chechnya are still woefully lacking in computer and Internet skills.
- Children’s Internet Information Center in Grozny: This center would help Chechen libraries open Internet centers for children. Before the war, 680 libraries existed in Chechnya. Today there are only 265. Of those libraries only 18 cater to children.
- Women’s Center for Computer Literacy: The war has resulted in many families being left without a breadwinner. This center would prepare women for high-paying jobs by giving them computer and Internet skills.
As I reported to you in my last newsletter, I continue to speak publicly about the medical disaster in Chechnya and the problems of reconstruction. Thanks to your generous contributions, the ICCC is making a small but much appreciated contribution for alleviating the suffering brought on by war.
Dr. Khassan Baiev, Chairman
March 2007
Projects A Success, Medical Situation Still Critical
Dear Friends and Supporters:
I have just returned from a five week trip to Chechnya where I talked to medical professionals about the catastrophic state of health there and visited people to whom to the ICCC has given help.
The reconstruction taking place in Grozny says little about the nation’s health, especially where it relates to the children. The pediatricians I spoke to expressed alarm at the spiraling increase of birth defects among the new born. Chechnya is experiencing a rise in birth rates at the end of major combat operations as people seek to replace the war dead.
Birth defects include babies born without some internal organs, with missing fingers, cleft palettes, harelips. The reason for the rise in birth defects appears to be the result of war, plus lack of prenatal and post-natal care for women. The director of the Children’s Neurological Hospital told me that she has no room for all the children who need attention.
Additionally, I can report the following:
Operation Bread: I found that this program has been one of our most successful. Each morning 100 loaves of bread which arrived at the Children’s Neurological Hospital and the School for the Deaf assure that the children would be well fed that day. At the end of April our contract with the baker ends and if we have the funds we would like to renew it for another year.
The Grozny School for the Blind: The School has moved out of their old bombed-out building to an old school donated by the government. While the100 blind children have a roof over their heads, there is no water or electricity. When I asked Madame Khava Karimova, the director, how the ICCC could help, she suggested sports equipment. The ICCC donation included, climbing ropes, hula-hoops, basketballs and other items to help the children exercise.
School No. 1 in Alkhan Khalka: The ICCC donated some musical instruments, including an electric keyboard and flutes to this school where I received my elementary and secondary education. The dance teacher at the school reported that there were 100 children interested in signing up for dance classes, but that he had no music to accompany the dance. Dancing and martial arts keeps children off the street.
Help to Needy Families: At the close of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan in November, we gave small donations to families who had adopted homeless children. This consisted of money and/or flour. The families expressed enormous appreciation that we had remembered them.
The future: My dream is to build a small clinic in Grozny, which specializes in children’s birth defects. As a reconstructive surgeon, I know these children can be helped to look in the mirror each morning and not be ashamed of what they see. With this dream in mind, I am applying for a scholarship here in the United States to update my surgical skills with the hope that I can be of help to my people. Medical technology moves very fast and I need to learn the latest methods in the field of plastic surgery.
In the meantime, I continue to speak out about the medical disaster in Chechnya and work with the ICCC to address this pressing issue.
Dr. Khassan Baiev, Chairman
April 2006
Putting the Pieces Back Together
Dear Friends and Supporters:
In March, one of our board members made a visit to Chechnya. The purpose of the trip was to check up on our current projects, and to learn the best way to help the children who have paid a terrible price during six years of war. Read more.
Our board member found that most of the shooting has now stopped, but people are desperately trying to put their shattered lives back together with very little help from the outside world. The aftermath of war is sometimes worse than the fighting itself. People are exhausted, grieving for lost relatives, and battling life-changing mental and physical ailments. A few schools and hospitals are being restored, but doctors, nurses and teachers are in short supply.
Our representative made follow-up visits to several of the organizations that your donations had helped in the past.
At the Grozny School for the Deaf, where we had provided specialized training for two of the teachers, he found the children were working with text books and other supplies we had provided. Current Needs: Tools for teaching the hearing- and visually-impaired
At the Children's Neurological Hospital No.2 in Grozny the electricity and water has at last been reconnected with our help and the hospital is functioning again. The children are playing with toys from the six boxes we had sent them: Current Needs: A wide range of medical supplies.
Help to Needy Families: Our board member visited some of the families we had helped with small donations and clothes and organized for 600 sacks of flour to be delivered to 300 other needy families. A small donation of money, a few clothes and a sack of flour go a long way for these desperately poor families, many of whom have taken in orphans from the streets. Their heart-felt appreciation made me feel we are making a difference. Our observer reported that some of the families cried when they saw him, hardly believing that people in America cared about them. “You have saved us,” one woman said.
Future Plans: In the course of our board member's visit, he identified several organizations where I think the ICCC could be helpful.
He made contact with the CHECHEN ASSOCIATION FOR THE BLIND, where both the director, Khava Karimova, and her husband are blind. Madame Karimova reported that the war destroyed two of the three schools which accepted blind children. Today blind children live at home, often in terrible conditions, without any access to education or training. Current Needs: orientation guides, audio equipment, aides for learning Braille, games for the blind.
He also met with Dr. Kheda Aidomirova of the Chechen Center for the Fight Against AIDS, who reported that HIV infections had moved from high risk groups into the general population. Among the infected are women of child-bearing age, and children. Every month, 8-10 new cases are uncovered at the laboratory and the situation continues to get worse because of the desperate social-economic conditions, unemployment, and idleness of youth, she reported. Current Needs: Medicines to diagnose and treat HIV infection.
Our board member signed a contract with a local baker to deliver 50 loaves of bread a day to the School for the Deaf and the Children's Neurological Hospital. Not only will this agreement help feed the children, but will bolster local employment.
The Children's Dance Group of Alkhan Kala: This group was found by a dedicated volunteer in an effort to get young people off the street and teach them the importance of culture when all they have experienced are bullets. Current Needs: musical instruments, costumes and a synthesizer.
STATISTICS
• The current population of Chechnya is estimated at 450,000. Before the beginning of the war in 1994 it was over one million.
• An estimated 250,000 Chechens have died as a result of the war. An estimated l50,000 Chechens live outside the country as refugees.
• An estimated 150,000 Chechens are internally displaced and live in basements and bombed out buildings.
• An estimated 75 percent of the land is environmentally contaminated.
• About 40,000 children died in the war.
• There are 26,000 orphans.
• About 14,000 children are invalids
• One child in two is born with a birth defect.
• An estimated 80 percent of pregnant women suffer pregnancy-related ailments.
• An estimated 40 percent of children suffer sight or hearing problems.
• Only five percent of children with hearing, sight or speech impairment receive education.
• An estimated 70 percent of children examined have tuberculosis.
Again, I want to thank all of you for your support. Your help is slowly convincing the Chechen people that they have not been totally abandoned.
Dr. Khassan Baiev, Chairman
January 2005
Much Work Must Be Done
Dear Friends and Supporters:
I want to thank you all for your concern, support and trust. These are difficult times for Chechnya and her children who are victims of a conflict not of their making. Your contributions are an important source of hope for them.
I wish I could report that conditions over the past year have improved for the children but Chechnya remains a medical disaster area. The continued violence and the after-effects of war take their toll: Pediatricians report that one child in three is born with birth defects; others have lost limbs or contracted tuberculosis, and health care workers are reporting more childhood cancers and other diseases, some of which they cannot identify.
As you know, it is very difficult to reach Chechnya. Logistics are complicated and funds can fall into the pockets of the wrong people. For this reason we are moving slowly, making sure that the projects we undertake have a good chance of success. This year we chose to focus on the Grozny School for the Deaf. The school cares for some seventy children with various levels of hearing deficits, many of which were caused by war-related injuries, or from the lack of vaccinations for common childhood diseases.
The school has many needs. It is located in a bombed-out neighborhood, in a damaged building without proper heat or running water. The teachers have no specialization in training the deaf, nor is there any diagnostic equipment to determine the level of disability and the needs of each child.
What the school does have is a staff dedicated to the children and determined to persevere despite all hardships.
After consulting with experts at Boston's Perkins School for the Blind, we made teacher training and the provision of hearing aids our first priority. With donations from concerned individuals such as yourselves and with a grant from the Perkins School, we have funds to send two of the teachers from the Grozny School for the Deaf to a seven-month training course in Moscow. The teachers have begun their training following a delay resulting from the tragedy at Beslan.
In addition to the training for these two teachers, the funds we have will cover specialized training in Moscow for an ear-nose-and-throat specialist from Grozny's Ninth City Hospital. Your contributions will also allow her to purchase testing equipment for the Grozny School for the Deaf – and that equipment will travel to other parts of Chechnya where there are few services available for hearing-impaired children.
The staff at the Grozny School for the Deaf report that one of their top priorities is to teach each child a marketable skill such as the use of sewing machines. We have located a source of several machines near Grozny and hope to transport them to the school in the near future.
Finally, we have made a modest donation to the Sakharov Foundation, a Moscow-based NGO, for distribution to families with needy children.
The needs of Chechnya's children are great, and I wish we could do more. But I am also aware of the immense difficulties facing humanitarian projects in Chechnya. For the coming year we will continue our support for the Grozny School for the Deaf and we will explore the possibility of sending much-needed medical instruments for the Children's Hospital in Grozny.
Thank you once again for your donations and for your concern – you are making it possible to hope. Best wishes for the coming holidays.
Dr. Khassan Baiev, Chairman
In the News
The media has taken notice of the ICCC's and Dr. Baiev's work in the last four years. To read a sampling of articles and to read previous updates from ICCC board members, please use the following link. [Read more]
