Hospitals and orphanages

Moscow is the showplace of Russia. As mentioned before, it is kept clean, there is much employment and we have at our disposal in the mission a state of the art medical center and dental center. However, many of the hospitals are a far cry from this.

Our two doctors in the mission have the responsibility to check out the hospitals in the whole mission. What they have found is very different. Because most of the money is spent in Moscow, the outlying cities are hurt financially by not having what they need for even some of the basics. It sounds like some of them a person would be much better off taking their chances outside of the hospital. Very sad indeed.

Their description of some of the hospitals brought me to tears as I learned of good doctors who cared about their patients, but didn't have the means to take care of them. Many of the stethoscopes they wear, don't even work. They pretend. There is a great need for the basics to properly care for their patients.

In one hosptital the patients have to provide their own toilet paper and food. Hopefully they have family who can bring these items to them. Others don't have sheets for the bed. The list goes on. It is truly heartbreaking.

And unlike America, there are lots of orphanages. They are for certain ages. Such as infant to age 4, "middle age" and older. Many of their needs are barely being met. When asked about adoption, it appears that babies with special needs (such as cleft palates) are available for adoption, but by the time the couple from America is through it has cost $30,000 or so. Elder Storm, who works with his wife in humanitarian in Russia and has done so much good! has said that it kills him to leave these precious babies. He carries them around and how they cry when he puts them down!!

It appears that they want Russians to adopt the children. Sadly, however, the divorce rate is very high and intact families are very often not available.