1. How healthy institutional children available for adoption in Russia are?

- You almost are not going to encounter the case of completely healthy child.

2. What kind of illnesses Russian institutional children has been mostly having?

- Hopefully most of these children has been having relatively non-serious health problem. Those who were under 3-4 years of age often show signs of anemia, rickets, developmental delay and failure to thrive, significant number of them having the history of intrauterine syphilis and hepatitis C exposure, few of them may have the history of intrauterine HIV exposure. Those who were older then 4 years of age often having rickets late effect, intestinal parasites, few of them having the history of TB exposure, but not active TB infection. Some of them, regardless of age, are having congenital deformities such as Cleft Lip and Palate, Hand Congenital Defect, Congenital Heart Defect etc. Some of them are really special need children due history of Cerebral Palsy, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and/or Fetal Alcohol Effect.

3. What do we do if we get the adoption referral from Russian National Data Bank?

- It is highly desirable to obtain child’s comprehensive medical history, photographs and video and then have these materials to be counseled by intercountry adoption medicine expert.

4. What kind of medical record from the child’s medical history are we looking for to obtain?

- You should try as much as possible to obtain comprehensive medical record including pre-natal history, delivery history including gestational age, birth weight, height at birth, and head circumference at birth, and Apgar scores, neonatal history including Primary Hypothyreodism, PCU, and intrauterine infection blood tests, attaining of developmental milestones.

5. What kind of child’s photographs we are looking to obtain?

- You got to look to obtain photographs including frontal close view of child face as well as Left and Right such view.

6. What kind of child’s video we are looking to obtain?

- In case of young child who is under 3 years old you shell try to obtain the video demonstrating developmental milestones of this particular child.

7. What kind of medical terms we are going to find in Russian medical records?

- An education in Russian medical schools and philosophy of Russian health care system and its delivery are very different from those in the West indeed. Thus in every Russian medical record you will find very unfamiliar terminology such as “perinatal encephalopathy”, “traumatic-ischemic brain damage at birth”, “hypertension-hydrocephalic syndrome”, “retinal angiopathy” etc. These terms may mean anything serious or nothing serious at all. To find the truth in term of child’s health, his or her developmental status and risk factors if any for child further health and development would be essential for you to look for intercountry adoption medicine expert counseling.