Ianos Korchak Institute

Ianos-Korchak Institute of Odessa. It is a rehabilitation centre for small children, youngs and adults with psychophysical handicaps. The challenge of Irina Galina, psychiatrist and child neuropathologist, begins in 1989 in a room obtained in a sanatorium. Today the institute is a medium size clinic found in the green belt of the city. Irina graduated in Moscow in 1960. After 4 years, she transfered to Odessa and started working in the hospitals. The unique possibility for children reporting mental and physical disabilities is to end up in the ‘internat’, the state homes. It is with great difficulty that the neuropathologist starts taking care of them, not until she finds European funds, private and with the collaboration of Professor Mutters from Germany, she starts to obtain the necessary sum to expand the clinic. Irina, in the meantime, has also invented a therapy, where it occurs the use of electrostimulation to fingers to help children unable to speak and to move. Her research are published and the therapy is even extended to the child hospitals of Moscow. The clinic is free of charge for kids, whatever their social status. An advisory committee chooses children living in the worse condition. Irina is now launching a new project: an International Rehabilitation Centre with the participation of Ukraine, Byelorussia and Germany. She has already found the piece of land close to Odessa. Apart the curative therapies, it will also include activities like working in the fields and making handicrafts. The aim is to offer the patients a life much more independent as possible. “And like this, my life circle closes!” says Irina. “This will be the crowning of my career, the reason of my being here, if God wants it to be so.”

Keywords ukraine odessa ianos-korchak institute rehabilitation handicap mental psychiatry young kid neuropathology disability cure