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Salt mines offer `miraculous' cures

"We have a sterile environment equal to a surgery room. Our treatment is by microclimate underground that's practically impossible to reproduce above ground."

Yaroslav Chonka, chief doctor at Ukraine's allergological hospital

Driving by the village of Solotvino in western Ukraine, you'd never know that a unique healing haven for lung ailments lies deep beneath its dreary landscape of Soviet-era buildings and trash heaps.

Three hundred meters underground, hundreds of people with respiratory illnesses leave their ailments behind in the cavernous tunnels carved out of a working salt mine, the walls glistening with salt deposits.

"There are children who get one or two treatments and they forget about asthma," says Yaroslav Chonka, the chief doctor at Ukraine's allergological hospital in Ukraine's Transcarpathian region, on the border with Romania, which has been treating patients with this alternative method since 1976.

Vlad Rybakov, a 12-year-old from Ukraine's southern city of Odessa, is in the middle of his first treatment.

Rybakov came to get relief from an asthma attack that appeared out of nowhere two years ago and put a stop to his track-and-field days -- and already, he feels a difference.

"Before, I would get attacks and it felt like I was going to run out of air," he says, standing by an alcove carved from the side of a tunnel with beds for four patients.

"But now I don't get them anymore. And I can run again. When I get back to Odessa, I'll start playing sports again with the other kids," he said.

The method practiced at the hospital is called speleotherapy -- using the microclimates of underground places like mines or caves to treat lung ailments -- and has been in use in eastern Europe since the beginning of the last century, when the first such spa was opened in a salt mine in the Polish village of Velicko, near Krakow.

Observations

The practice grew out of observations in the mid 1800s by a Polish health official that salt miners did not suffer from respiratory ailments like tuberculosis.

Today salt sanitoriums are dotted throughout central and eastern Europe.

Some use salt mines, others salt caves, while others offer rooms lined with salt crystals.

What makes the Ukrainian allergological hospital unique is the location of its underground facility -- at 300m below ground, it is the deepest facility of its kind in the world.

The air at that level, which feels heavy to a newcomer, is warm (a constant temperature of around 22?C), permeated with salt (15mg/m3) and nearly free of microbes and electromagnetic waves.

Underground facility

"We have a sterile environment equal to a surgery room," says Chonka. "Our treatment is by microclimate underground that's practically impossible to reproduce above ground."

A single treatment usually lasts 24 days, during which a patient will descend into the mine up to 18 times for anywhere from three hours to overnight.

The rest of the time is spent at the above-ground facility.

While below, the adults usually read or lounge around on the beds stacked into alcoves carved out of the tunnels. The children run around until "quiet hour," when the fluorescent lamps lighting the tunnels are shut off and they lie in bed, laughing and chatting.

Striking results

The results are striking.

"We can't say that we help everyone," Chonka says. "But the treatment is 90-95 percent effective for children, and 80-85 percent effective for adults."

Most patients begin to feel the effects after just a few descents into the mine.

"It's my third day," Sergei, a 45-year-old businessman from Moscow says, waiting to enter the elevator to take him down for his fourth mine visit. "After the first day, I didn't need to use my inhaler anymore."

Most children who have non-serious forms of asthma usually undergo two or three treatment sessions, says Chonka, who has worked at the hospital since 1981 when he became deputy chief physician. For adults and more severe illnesses, the process can take longer.

"This is my sixth year," says Serhiy Savchuk, a 48-year-old from the central Ukrainian city of Kirovograd who suffers from chronic bronchitis.

"After treatment, I feel much better, but it slowly deteriorates and lasts about a year before I have to come back," Savchuk said.

The hospital treats more than 5,000 patients a year -- three quarters of them under the free government health care system, with the rest paying US$22 a day -- and has a waiting list months long.

"This place is a godsend," says Yelena Dietrich, a German national who heard about the facility from friends in western Ukraine and whose 10-year-old daughter is in the middle of her first treatment.

"Before, running was out of the question for her. Now she can run," she said.
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