“Ask The Doctor” of Rinat Akhmetov Foundation: why self-medication is life threatening for Covid-19 patients

Despite the New Year holidays, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation continues weekly on-line sessions with Ukraine’s lead medical experts as part of the Ask The Doctor project. The doctors provide information about the healthcare events, share best clinical practices, and give plain and simple-term explanations regarding coronavirus. Their next live guest was Elena Kligunenko, a Doctor of Medical Sciences, professor, a winner of Ukraine State Prize For Science and Technology and vice-president of the Ukrainian Association of Anesthesiologists.

The expert shared her observations regarding the current situation with COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine. According to the doctor, there is a slight decrease in the number of new cases; moreover, the doctors see an obvious reduction in the number of patients with severe coronavirus symptoms.

“There can be many reasons to explain this. The first reason is vaccination of the population. Immunization will indisputably ease the severity of any COVID-19 strains. As a result, less people will face sever and extremely severe illness”, commented Elena Kligunenko.

The medical expert also commented on Omicron, a new coronavirus variant.

“Due to multiple mutations, the aggressiveness of the virus went down. Compared to the initial variants of coronavirus, it cannot penetrate into the body cells as quickly. This also has effect on how the disease will manifest itself”, said the doctor.

Elena Kligunenko also spoke about the uncontrolled use of hormone drugs and antibiotics by people in their treatment of coronavirus:

“Unreasonable use of antibiotics leads to bacteria becoming antibiotic resistant. Later, when those antibiotics are really needed, they will simply not work. Along with antibiotics, there is another problem of self-medication with hormone drugs. Hormone drugs should not be used unless prescribed by doctors, otherwise it may be fraught not only with adrenal glands, metabolic disorders, obesity or hypertension issues, but it can lead to disability.

The history of views shows that the contents of the Ask The Doctor project have been viewed on the digital platforms of the Rinal Akhmetov Foundation more than 21 million times. The guests of the on-line sessions included famous experts like cardiac surgeon Boris Todurov; cardiologist, a corresponding member of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine and a member of the European Society of Cardiologists Ekaterina Amosova; psychiatrist, a Doctor of Medical

Sciences and professor Oleg Chaban; president of the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine Sergey Dubrov, and other.

Ask The Doctor is a part of Fighting COVID-19 In Ukraine project. A total of about UAH 500 million have been allocated by Rinat Akhmetov to fight coronavirus. Due to this, the Fund helped save the lives of about 1.5 million people.

Videos of sessions with the practitioners can be viewed at the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation Facebook page and on YouTube.

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