At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the new exhibition at the Kyiv Art Gallery.
Tetiana Klymenko was about to introduce her works — contemporary abstract paintings made in bright colors that immediately captured the audience’s attention.
But Klymenko is not an artist, and the exhibited pieces were not paintings. They were enlarged snapshots of Klymenko’s lung cells, affected by cancer.
“These artworks look beautiful, but there is a horrifying power that created them,“ Klymenko said.
She was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019. It was in the early stages, and she has recovered. She was luckier than most. In Ukraine, around 70% of lung cancer patients are diagnosed in the late stages, making it extremely hard to treat.
Lack of acknowledgment of its symptoms and disregarding the regular medical checkups have made lung cancer the deadliest type of cancer in the country: It kills nearly 9,000 Ukrainians every year.
To raise awareness about the problem, the pharmaceutical giant Roche Ukraine has supported Klymenko’s unusual exhibition. It opened on World Cancer Day on Feb. 4, and ran until Feb. 7.
Called “Deadly Beautiful Exhibition,” it featured several pictures of Klymenko’s lung cells, banners narrating her story and stories of others who also defeated the disease.
“It’s more than an exhibition, it’s a chance to talk about the problem that cannot be kept silent anymore,” Klymenko said.
It starts with a cough
Kyiv architect Klymenko, 61, says she led a healthy lifestyle: She did sports and never smoked or drank alcohol.
But that couldn’t save her from getting lung cancer.
Klymenko says she started coughing severely during her vacation in Egypt two years ago. When she returned to Ukraine, Klymenko immediately contacted her doctor. She thought it was pneumonia but the diagnosis hit her like a ton of bricks — adenocarcinoma of the left lung, one of the most common types of lung cancer.
“I kept asking myself: ‘Why me?’” Klymenko said.
Kyiv architect Tetiana Klymenko talks to journalists during the opening of the “Deadly Beautiful Exhibition,” which was announced as a contemporary art exhibition but turned out to be a campaign that raises awareness about lung cancer, in Kyiv on Feb. 4, 2021. Instead of the paintings, the exhibition features enlarged snapshots of Klymenko’s lung cells, affected by cancer. (Volodymyr Petrov)
With her family’s support and doctors’ help, Klymenko defeated cancer. She was discharged from the hospital five days after the surgery as there were no complications and no metastases. Now, Klymenko undergoes medical checkups once every six months and lives her life to the fullest.
What saved Klymenko’s life was that she contacted her doctor right after the first symptoms appeared.
In Ukraine, only around 28 percent of lung cancer patients detect the disease in the early stages, according to the national cancer registry of Ukraine.
Oksana Surtseva, the medical director at Roche Ukraine, says they decided to share Klymenko’s story to show Ukrainians that it is possible to battle lung cancer, especially if it’s detected early.
“We wanted to show that lung cancer is not just a disease of smokers, it concerns everyone who has lungs,” Surtseva told the Kyiv Post.
Quit smoking
Lung cancer kills more people around the globe than any other type of cancer, according to the Cancer’s Global Footprint website.
While smoking is one of the main causes of the disease, air pollution is another reason that often provokes lung cancer.
According to Yurii Kondratskyi, a surgical oncologist at National Cancer Institute, lung cancer has become one of the most common types of cancer around 150 years ago. Before that, stomach cancer was the number one for both men and women. Meanwhile, breast cancer remains the prevalent type among women and prostate cancer dominates among men.
Just like in the rest of the world, lung cancer tops the list in Ukraine. Every year, around 13,000 Ukrainians are diagnosed with the disease, according to Kondratskyi. Stomach cancer, the second most common type for both men and women, is diagnosed nearly twice fewer times.
Unlike in other European countries, in Ukraine, lung cancer is most often diagnosed in the late stages causing death rates to follow.
Kondratskyi says that it is sometimes hard to detect lung cancer at the early stages since it can show no symptoms until the second or third stage.
Regular medical checkups could, however, change the situation. But nearly 46 percent of Ukrainians abandon the practice, according to the poll by international research agency IFAK Institut conducted in 2020.
A woman takes a photograph of air balloons with facts about lung cancer in Ukraine, as she visits the “Deadly Beautiful Exhibition” at Kyiv Art Gallery on Feb. 4, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
“Unfortunately, there are many cases when the patient is already coughing with blood sputum but doesn’t contact a doctor, thinking the cough will just stop at one point,” Kondratskyi told the Kyiv Post.
There is a general issue with ignorance about lung cancer in Ukraine: Nearly 60 percent of Ukrainians don’t know its symptoms, according to the poll by the IFAK Institut.
“Some patients ignore a mild cough for months because they think it is bronchitis, a cold or a consequence of smoking,“ Surtseva said.
Strong cough, pain in the chest, and weakness are among the first symptoms, according to Surtseva.
Kondratskyi says people over 50 and those who smoke are in the risk groups, so they should take better care of their health and regularly undergo medical checkups.
“First of all, quit smoking,” the oncologist said.
Surprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic can improve the situation with detecting lung cancer in Ukraine.
Cough, which is one of the main symptoms of both COVID-19 and lung cancer, has urged people to do checkups more often since the start of the pandemic.
There are no new statistics yet, but Kondratskyi hopes they have detected more cases of lung cancer in the early stages than before.
The disease itself is difficult to treat, Kondratskyi says. Especially since not all hospitals in Ukraine have access to modern laboratories, the newest ways of treatment and medication.
The price for lung cancer treatment in Ukraine starts from around Hr 20,000 ($718) for the surgical treatment of the first stage, and Hr 70,000-80,000 ($2,514-2,873) for one month of immunotherapy treatment of the fourth stage cancer – an immense sum of money for most Ukrainians.
For a while, most cancer patients were forced to pay for the treatment on their own.
In 2020, the National Health Service of Ukraine, an agency operating under the guidance of the health ministry, launched a state program to fund cancer treatment. This year, the agency is planning to spend over Hr 5 billion on cancer patients.
Kondratskyi, however, says that the state only pays for surgery when it’s performed in the first stage of lung cancer.
The Kyiv Post requested a comment from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine but hasn’t heard back yet.
Art can help
Kondratskyi believes that the more people talk about the disease and the more they hear of cancer symptoms and its treatment, the more people will get diagnosed in the early stages.
Surtseva agrees, saying they decided to teach Ukrainians about lung cancer in such an unusual way to attract as much publicity to the problem as possible.
But the “Deadly Beautiful Exhibition” is only one step in Roche Ukraine’s effort to battle lung cancer ignorance in Ukraine. Their big project, The Year of Lung Cancer Awareness, launched in November 2020 with a lightning show at Kyiv’s Olimpiyskiy Stadium. Throughout 2021, the company will continue the activity to raise awareness about lung cancer, hoping for the situation to shift.
“We need to detect lung cancer patients earlier to have better outcomes,” says Martin Werschlan, the CEO of Roche Ukraine.
