Some dwellers of an apartment block in Moscow want cancer-stricken kids and their parents kicked out. The reason? Because "cancer is an infectious disease spread through [the] air," they say.
“Cancer is an infectious disease, 200 types of it have been discovered,” a notice at an apartment block in the Konkovo District in south-western Moscow read.
On the weekend, it was reported that local activists have started gathering signatures in order to prevent the building “from becoming a cancer clinic.”
They were in a panic because one of the flats in the tenement, located near the Dmitry Rogachev National Medical Research Centre, was often rented by families of sick children, who underwent cancer treatment at the facility.
“We have a hotbed of (cancer) infections here. And when one infection overlaps another – it’s scary. The elevators are enclosed spaces; they accumulate everything. We are in constant contact with cancer patients with various infections,” the warning note claimed.
The authors urged those, who also thought that young cancer patients should be kicked out, to submit their signatures. “Let this flat be rented to other people,” the paper urged.
Remarkably, the call wasn’t left unanswered as one of the residents told Moskva 24 that sick people should stay in hospital instead of “squatting at rented flats.” His neighbor agreed, saying that it was the task of NGOs to provide housing for cancer patients.
But there were also those who supported the sick children and placed notes of their own, informing that cancer wasn’t infectious.
Officials involved in protecting children’s right and medics didn’t mince words in bashing the bizarre campaign to evict the cancer patients.
Gathering signatures was a “caveman, cannibalistic” idea, Evgenia Bunimovich, Moscow’s child ombudsman, told Tass.
A combination of aggression and ignorance is a very dangerous symptom. We talk a lot about educating children. But it’s the grownups, who – regrettably – need some education as well.
The state and the media should do more to raise awareness about cancer among the population to avoid such situations, Bunimovich added.
Also on rt.com Cancer sufferer documenting her fight with disease wins Andrei Stenin picture contest (PHOTOS)The head of the Rogachev Center, Galina Novikova, warned that the stance of the residence was “a manifestation of absolute ignorance,”which can deliver “irreversible psychological damage to the sick children and their parents.”
The small patients wear flu masks – that scared the residents so much – because the intense chemotherapy they undergo drastically reduces their immunity, she said.
They can’t infect anybody. On the contrary, we are a threat to them because even the most basic infection may turn out lethal for them.
Novikova also expressed regret that it’s not the first time her colleagues and she encounter such unfair and misinformed treatment of cancer patients.
Russia’s General Prosecutors also noticed the reports, announcing on Monday that it’s going to probe the campaign to evict the sick children. The prosecutors promised to take action if the signature gathering proves to be a form of discrimination against them.
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