Friends of the Belarusian Children's Hospice

Anna Garchakova introduced palliative care to the Republic of Belarus and was the founder of the first children’s hospice in all the countries of the former Soviet Union.  

Anna was born in Leningrad in 1956.  She graduated from Leningrad Medical Nursing School in 1978 and then entered Leningrad State University where she obtained diplomas in biology, chemistry and medical psychology.  

My name is Dr Natalia Savva and I am an experienced paediatrician specialising in paediatric oncology, haematology and palliative care. For nearly 20 years, I worked as a paediatric oncologist and haematologist in the Belarusian Research Centre for Paediatric Oncology and Haematology.  I received my PhD in 2001 and was appointed as Deputy Director of Science at the Centre in 2005.

I was born in 1956 into a military family in the city of Petropavlovsk Kamchatsky in the far east of Russia.  My childhood was spent moving from one city to another as we followed my father around the Soviet Union.  I started school in Kaliningrad, the furthest western point in Russia, then changed to a school in the capital of the Republic of Georgia, in the Caucasus, and finally graduated from senior school in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.