People suffering from the rare and incurable Motor Neurone Disease (MND)
will be able to consult Russian specialists on new website http://mndfund.ru/. In Russia,
even now there are no specialist medical institutions that provide hospital
care to people with MND. The charity ‘Mercy’ has launched a project in Moscow
in which two doctors and three priests will give advice to patients and their
families, provide moral and spiritual support, and help to set up special
equipment for pulmonary ventilation.

The creation of the website opens up the next stage in the
development of the project. In Western countries over 100 official medical
studies are conducted annually on MND, and there are frequent attempts to discover
new medicines that may be able to cure the disease. No such studies are
conducted in Russia and laboratories that can diagnose the disease are located
only in big cities.

The site has recommendations for looking after patients and news
on the latest scientific discoveries regarding MND. For those suffering from amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, there is also a helpline: (495) 542-00-00.

Information

Motor Neurone Disease is incurable and kills about 100,000 people
in the world every year. Symptoms include paralysis, the muscles in the
diaphragm breaking down and wasting away and a few years after the first
appearance of symptoms, death by asphyxiation. The causes of the disease are
still unknown. The most famous person with MND is the British
theoretical-physicist Stephen Hawking. In Moscow about 800 people suffer from
different forms of MND, nationwide the figure is 9000.

http://www.asi.org.ru/asi3%5Crws_asi.nsf/va_WebPages/4C18F81D877A953FC325796000308941Rus

Translated by Lina Numan