Dr. Alexandra Kriminetskaya

“When did that spot appear?”

It’s nearly noon in the sterile ward of the Hematology and Intensive Care Department, part of Russia’s National Center for Hematology. Dr. Alexandra Kriminetskaya, head of the Hematology Department, looks worried. With a dozen young doctors and medical students peering over her shoulder, Dr. Kriminetskaya gently presses on the abdomen of her patient, a paper-thin teenage girl wearing a kerchief over her shorn head. After some discussion, she orders a change in medication. Then she and her flock move on.

The sterile ward houses the most serious cases under Dr. Kriminetskaya’s care: hepatitis, acute leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease. Several of the patients, all in their teens and early twenties, come from parts of Russia exposed to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.