About the Center

Dear friends!
Dear patients!
Dear parents of our children!

We would like to introduce you to a unique children’s medical center in our Republic. This is perhaps the most striking embodiment of the well-known slogan “All the best for children”. The Republican Scientific and Practical Center for Children’s Oncology, Hematology and Immunology of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Belarus opened in October 1997. It was the result of cooperation between the Belarusian and Austrian governments, as well as the Austrian humanitarian organization “Hilfswerk”. Today, this beautiful white and blue building embodies our wildest dreams of medicine in the new century.

Every year in our country about 300-350 boys and girls fall ill with malignant neoplasms. These diseases are one of the main causes of death in children under 18 all over the world. Fortunately, today we are not talking about the total fatality of childhood cancer. This is a disease that needs to be treated and can be cured. In all civilized countries, the level of medical care in the country, as well as the level of development of society, its human values are assessed by the level of assistance provided to cancer patients. Today we can confidently say that most of our little patients have a future.

The path of development of pediatric oncology and hematology in our Republic was long and difficult. It all started with a small hematology department with 30 beds at the 1st Clinical Hospital of Minsk. The applied treatment regimens did not give encouraging results, there was a shortage of medications, the level of diagnostics left much to be desired. Only 12 patients out of every 100 treated for acute leukemia had a chance to live. In 1990, the Children’s Hematology Center was organized at the 1st Clinical Hospital of Minsk, and modern treatment protocols began to be applied. However, the risk of complications was very high due to unsatisfactory conditions of patients’ stay in the hospital, since the Children’s Hematology Center was located in an unsuitable room. At the same time, children with solid tumors were treated at adult oncology departments until 1989; in some cases, the main treatment methods were surgery and palliative radiation therapy. In 1989, a children’s department was opened at the Research Institute of Oncology and Medical Radiology. Nevertheless, there was an acute need for a well-equipped specialized children’s clinic that would combine the efforts and knowledge of pediatric hematologists and oncologists with the ability to develop and quickly implement new treatment methods that meet world quality standards for all children in Belarus suffering from hematological diseases or malignant tumors.

Thanks to the use of modern diagnostic and treatment protocols and the introduction of high-tech methods, the Center has achieved results comparable with the world’s leading centers. Thus, the overall five-year survival rate of children (0-17 years) with hemoblastoses (leukemia, lymphoma) is 84%, and with other malignant neoplasms (hemoblastoses excluded) – 75%. The data of a comparative analysis of survival for patients from 67 countries published in the Lancet in 2015 indicate that Belarus ranks 10th in the world in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children, ahead of such countries as the USA, Israel, Japan, Finland, etc. (Lancet 2015; 385: 977–1010).