Kamil is so fond of football but he has to play tough games with Death instead

How awful and downright unbearable it is to be able only to watch the summer through the window when you are 12. The boys are kicking the ball and inventing some funny games. But Kamil Umarov is in a hospital, he has to play his own tough game with death. He has got tuberculosis of bones. That is why at his age he already knows about chemotherapy more than most adults.

Five years ago chemotherapy came into his life. He tends to believe he was born with a fever. It is true all the 12 years of his life his temperature was like a life-counter. Enough to skip just one ”chemo” and the temperature jumps up sharply. How much does it cost – of suffering? And in rubles? He needs some very expensive medicines to survive.

Long ago Kamil was vaccinated against tuberculosis. Only years later did they find out that the boy had primary immunodeficiency and  in his blood there was no Interleikin-12 which serves as a mediator between natural and acquired immunity. It was because of its lack that the boy got tuberculosis of bones and joints after that shot of vaccine.  We sit in Kamil’s ward. Outside the windows of Sechenov clinic it is summer, the bright sun and luscious crowns of trees on Dostoyevski street. On the TV screen a football game is on, Rubin against TsSKA. “Goal! They’he scored on the last minute, – Kamil shouts. – That’s it. They won’t win it back. TsSKA has won.”

Kamil has completed only one grade of an ordinary school in Dagestan. His teacher claimed he was the most able pupil in the class. But the next year he was taken to a hospital. Was it to be forever? And in all the many hospitals he had been taken since it was very difficult to study. The disease made it practically impossible.

Tuberculosis has been destroying his bones. When he was eight he had some dead tissue of his right humeral bone amputated. In a year he was on a patient’s  plate again. Now his body is almost all  in scars. Within his not very long life Kamil has been performed seven operations.

Kamil undergoes a course of medical treatment in Tuberculosis Children and Adolescents Department of Moscow Medical Academy named after Sechenov. Tuberculosis is killing him slowly. To fight the infection and for artificial rehabilitation of his immune system Kamil needs to take expensive drugs Imukan and Pentaglobin. The first costs 560.000 rubles (about $18500) for a five month course. The second is 180.000 rubles (almost $6000) for three month. Beside that the boy has to take medicines Geptril and Taranik all the time.

There is nobody to help Kamil and his mother Shakherizat. That is except us. We cannot let him go on fighting the death one to one.

Commentaries of doctors in charge

Yelena Larkina, head of the 4-th bone department, Kiritsy  sanatorium, Ryazan region.

– Immune medicines Imukin and  Pentaglobin are essential for Kamil to survive. They restore  immunity and they also suppress tuberculosis infection. We have observed that during the half-a-year period when the boy was getting Imukin, on that background he didn’t have acute conditions of the underlying disease. This medicine helped him well. But he had to stop taking it about two months ago.

Sergey Medvedev, doctor at Tuberculosis Children and Adolescents Department of Moscow Medical Academy named after Sechenov:

– Course of treatment with medicines Imukin and  Pentaglobin will help to achieve the desired effect if Kamil takes them for half a year.

August 2009. Kamil was given Ingaron, Mikobutin (to the amount of 8000 rubles), as well as Pentaglobin (to the amount of 86834 rubles), Tavanic (to the amount of 2 178 rubles). You can read the detailed report about the boy’s condition here.

October 2009. Kamil was given Imukin (to the amount of 5 571 euros) and Mikobutin (to the amount of 12000 rubles).

October 26, 2009. Kamil was prescribed a course of treatment with Imukin. The boy’s condition is satisfactory.  With the lapse of time this medicine will make it possible to reduce the  dose of chemotherapy. But the medical course will be effective only if we can purchase Imukin for Kamil for at least half a year. So far with your help our Foundation has purchased medicines for 10 weeks.

But the boy got a piece of glad news: our friends from charitable initiative Computers for Children gave him a computer.

February 2010. Kamil Umarov was given medicine Ursosan (to the amount of 1278 rubles), Nizoral and Natrium Derinat  (to the amount of 2 663 rubles). He was also given medicine Imukin (to the amount of 2 831 euros).