Oksana Omelchenko

Ukrainian museums are asking for help. They lack space, money, and attention. Today 90 percent of collections are hidden away in storerooms because the exhibition halls are too small. Storerooms are often unventilated and have leaky roofs. Provincial museums have guidebooks dating back decades and...

December 1 marked World AIDS Day. Countless events, conferences, and exhibits are held every year — then silence descends. In Ukraine, despite the fact that the numbers of HIV-infected people are steadily increasing, most people regard this virus as something remote, connected primarily with the...

From now on business will join in the struggle against the AIDS epidemic in Ukraine. The emergence of a coalition of leading Ukrainian companies has become a response of sorts to Ukraine’s president, who recently told a convention of family physicians in Kharkiv that representatives of business...

Ukrainian psychiatrists are anxiously awaiting the elections. No, don’t get me wrong, they’re not worried about the potential candidates. It is just that their patients may become a resource, however numerically insignificant, for election abuses. It suffices to recall the recent presidential...

Last week we celebrated International Tourism Day, which bureaucrats always welcome with exceptional enthusiasm. By 2010 Kyiv will be receiving ten times more tourists, while the number of Ukrainians eager to explore the capital’s famous landmarks will increase by six times. At least these are the...

What are the prospects for implementing President Yushchenko’s initiatives regarding a special UN session dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl tragedy and recognition of the 1932-1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide? What is the UN’s evaluation of the new Ukrainian government’s...

The Chornobyl nuclear disaster claimed 4,000 people, along with another 100,000-200,000, who can be rightfully called victims. These sensational statistics were made public in Kyiv during a conference that ended on August 7. They are sensational because the statistics differ, to put it mildly, from...

A year ago we ranked 70th. Like in 2004, the No. 1 country today is Norway: experts have found that its per capita income, life expectancy, and level of education and medical care are the best. The annual UN Human Development Report has squeezed Ukraine between Saudi Arabia and Peru. This is not...

There will never be 52 million living in Ukraine, not even 50 million. According to the Institute of Demography and Social Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU), the best-case scenario is 46 million by 2015, but only in the presence of a number of factors, primarily a higher...

A year ago some trainee psychologists visited a penal institution for young offenders. At first, the inmates gave the guests a cool reception: “We are not caged animals to be stared at.” But after a few hours it was hard to stem the tide of bitter life stories and reminiscences. When the...