The Russian Children's Clinical Hospital (RCCH) is a very large federal institution, which must provide medical help to any Russian children. I also sometimes say that the RCCH is a "hospital for the poor," although children from well-to-do families also receive treatment here. It is just that we try to organize medical help in such a way that each child in need of receiving such help in Moscow, in the RCCH, could indeed receive it from us irrespective of his or her parents' means and circumstances.

The most important advantage of the Russian health care system is that treatment is provided for free. But even if the treatment of a certain person at our hospital is free of charge for this patient, it is quite expensive for the state. The budget of our hospital approaches 1 billion roubles, that is, more than 30 million US dollars. Some regions of Russia have a smaller budget!

We don't resort to any artificial tricks in order to make treatment more expensive. Its cost is very high indeed. Almost 50 kinds of unique high-tech medical procedures are provided at the RCCH. Treatment of blood diseases and cancer, transplantations of kidney and marrow, surgical operations, etc. require a lot of money and can't stand underfinancing. And, although the financing of the hospital has become more or less decent during the last two or three years, we also try to cooperate with public charity organizations for fundraising.

And I must say that our Help Group together with its Charity Foundation for Seriously ill and Abandoned Children has long been one of the best assistants and allies of the hospital. I don't know the exact sum now, but the help thus received during the recent years amounts to tens of millions US dollars!.. All this money has been used by the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital for treatment purposes and has helped the state in providing high level of medical service to our little patients.

Our friends help the hospital not only in buying medicines and equipment. They arrange celebrations, bring presents, talk to children and their parents, provide moral and psychological support to them. There is church in the hospital, in the former conference hall. A person of any creed may come here to pray, to talk to an Orthodox priest, to ask God for help before an operation or before almost deadly chemotherapy that can save from leukemia.

And this help is priceless for us.