First surgery made in the repaired block of Republic's Hospital in Sukhumi

Block No. 1 of the Abkhazian Republic's Hospital has resumed work after overhaul. It has housed the wards of haemodialysis and vascular surgery, earlier non-existent in the republic.

According to Nargiza Kharchilava, Chief Physician of the Hospital, today there are 40 persons in Abkhazia, who need haemodialysis (an artificial kidney). They have to constantly go outside the republic. "It's an expensive procedure. The opening of the haemodialysis ward facilitates the process," she told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Ms Kharchilava has noted that now the hospital possesses, along with a modern computerized tomography device and high-resolution X-ray apparatus, a lithotripter – the apparatus for crushing calculi, which was never before in Abkhazia.

The hospital has already conducted the first operation of calculi fragmentation. According to Anrie Shoya, an urologist and candidate of medical sciences, the introduction of the new method now allows to avoid open surgery. "The procedure of destructing a calculus inside a human body by shock waves takes 20-40 minutes," he said.

Soon the builders will start overhauling the rest of the hospital, which suffered greatly during the war in Abkhazia in 1992-93; and within five years a united medical centre will be created here.