Ukraine's Health Ministry has recommended pooling UAH 100 million in state investment funds to rebuild and refurbish parts of Ukraine's National Cancer Institute to create a bone marrow transplant center for adults. The project would be a priority.

"We have the [National] Cancer Institute with space for the construction of such a center. According to the state investment project for 2017 more than UAH 100 million has been allotted for reconstruction of existing facilities. Yes, they need to be rebuilt, because the conditions there are awful, but we think the priority should be building a bone marrow transplant center for adults there," Ukraine's Deputy Health Minister Roman Ilyk said.

Ilyk added that money for the state investment project cannot be re-assigned to works at other facilities, for example, to rebuilding Kyiv's Transplantation Center, where bone marrow transplant operations were carried out until 2009. He said the Health Ministry is ready to support an initiative to attract state investment to refurbish the Kyiv center.

"If the Kyiv transplant center would be interested in joining the state investment project, the Health Ministry would be the first to lobby the idea. Bone marrow transplants for adults is a priority, and one facility able to do them is insufficient," he said, emphasizing that transplant issues for children could be handled by building a special clinic at the Okhmatdyt facility in Kyiv.

As earlier reported, in October 2016 an intergovernmental commission on state investment projects headed by First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv approved plans to allocate UAH 124.211 million for the reconstruction and development of Ukraine's National Cancer Institute.

The selection of investment projects was carried out from 2014 as part of introducing reforms using state investments funded by the World Bank.