Internet Access and Training Program (IATP)

The Internet Offers Answers for Doctors in Ukraine

My name is Serhiy Korchaka and I am a cardiologist from Kirovohrad, Ukraine. Since August 2001, I have been serving the community at City Polyclinic #1. Our clinic cannot afford to subscribe to the latest international medical journals and they are not available in local libraries. Since I have not been able to find the information I need to help my patients, I made a few attempts to use the Internet to find up-to-date information. But unfortunately I did not have basic Internet search skills, so even though the Internet has a vast amount of information, I was not able to find what I needed. Furthermore, spending significant amounts of time on the Internet was a major financial drain for me, so I had to limit my hours significantly.

Fortunately, my friends told me about an American program hosted by the Central City Library. At the end of August I visited the Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) access site for the first time. After participating in a couple of their free training sessions, I started to look for answers to my medical questions and the latest medical news in an organized way. In addition to the basic computer training, I took a course on HTML basics and created my personal website at http://www.iatp.kr.ua/doctor, and then I created a website for our hospital at http://hospital1.iatp.kr.ua. Both sites are hosted free of charge on the IATP server.

In February 2002, my colleagues showed me an unusual electrocardiogram. The test had been made in 1999, but no explanation or diagnosis had been found. A young man had checked into the hospital with symptoms of influenza. The examining doctors suspected cardiac arrest because of some unusual symptoms. But a more detailed examination did not confirm this diagnosis, nor had any explanation of such a strange electrocardiogram been found.

Subsequently, one of my more experienced colleagues, Yuriy Naumov, the head of the Functional Diagnosis Department at the District Heart Dispensary, received some information from colleagues about such electrocardiograms being indicative of Brugada syndrome. But we knew nothing about the nature of the syndrome, how to treat it, or even whether it is treatable. The existing Russian and Ukrainian literature made no mention of Brugada. Yuriy suggested that I log onto the Internet and see what I could find. To my astonishment, I found two articles in Russian written by scientists from Krasnoyarsk and St. Petersburg, Russia. Then I came across a Belgian website devoted entirely to this disease at http://www.crtia.be. I was able to confirm that the strange electrocardiogram was indeed indicative of Brugada syndrome.

Brugada syndrome is a genetic disease characterized by ventricular tachycardia. The only available method to treat tachycardia and save a patient’s life is implantation of a defibrillator (ICD). Now we can diagnose such cases quickly and direct patients to the Cardio-Surgical Center in Kyiv, which has facilities for treatment of Brugada.

I obtained detailed information about Brugada syndrome on the Internet a full eight months ago. To this day, there is still no information in Russian or Ukrainian journals or books, even though this disease was first described in 1991 and is not rare. This is why I am convinced that the Internet is the best source of information. It is unfortunate that the vast majority of hospitals in Ukraine, including my own, do not have have direct access to the Internet yet.

The Internet Access and Training Program has been extremely useful to the medical community in Kirovohrad. Without it I would still be in the dark about Brugada syndrome. Thank you, IATP.

Serhiy Korchaka, Kirovohrad, Ukraine

The Internet Access and Training Program is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State and is administered by IREX.

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