The government of Nicaragua announced on Tuesday that it plans to build, with support from Russia, a Nuclear Medicine Center specialized in cancer treatment and in the training of professionals in the area.
A delegation from the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health signed a memorandum with representatives of the Russian state-owned Rosatom Health Technologies in the Russian city of Sochi, said Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo to the Sandinista television channel Canal 4.
“They have signed a memorandum for the development of the Nuclear Medicine Center in our Nicaragua. A project that will become a reality in the near future,” said the vice president and wife of President Daniel Ortega.
“This center […] will allow us to reach a qualitatively new level in the diagnosis and treatment of socially significant diseases, expanding access to modern nuclear medicine technology for doctors and patients,” she added.
She emphasized that the agreement is “another project to strengthen the scientific and solidarity cooperation relations of the Russian Federation in our country.”
For his part, Rosatom’s CEO, Igor Obrubov, indicated that with this agreement, Nicaragua will have access to nuclear technologies “for peaceful purposes.”
“We are pleased to collaborate with the Republic of Nicaragua in expanding opportunities and access to nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes to preserve and improve health,” Obrubov said, according to the official portal El 19 Digital.
Russia is an important ally of Nicaragua, to which it provides wheat. In addition, it has supplied buses for public transportation, cars for taxis, and Sputnik vaccines against COVID-19. It also has an anti-drug police training center and provides technological and military support.
Russian cooperation includes the Latin American Institute of Biotechnology Mechnikov, a laboratory that produces flu vaccines and is designed to develop medicines against infectious diseases.
Nicaragua and Russia reactivated their economic and military cooperation relations in 2007 with the return to power of Ortega, a former ally of Moscow after the Sandinista revolution of 1979 until 1990.
