Bolivia Leader Plans to Build 3 Nuclear Medicine Centers to Fight Cancer

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) — Bolivian President Evo Morales announced the decision on Tuesday to built three nuclear medicine centers worth about $160 million to fight against cancer.

"We have decided these weeks that three comprehensive nuclear medicine centers will be built in Bolivia to detect and treat cancer," Morales said as quoted by the ABI news agency.

According to Morales, these centers will be built in the cities of El Alto, La Paz and Santa Cruz. A nuclear research center, which is expected to be built in El Alto with the help of Russia, will provide radioactive materials for these nuclear medicine centers.

In March 2016, Russia and Bolivia signed an intergovernmental cooperation agreement on building the Nuclear Research and Technology Center (NRTC) in El Alto. In August 2016, Russia’s Rosatom nuclear energy corporation signed the first commercial contracts with the Bolivian Nuclear Energy Agency (ABEN) on the center’s construction, in particular on the preliminary engineering survey of the site and on the evaluation of Bolivia's nuclear infrastructure.

In November 2016, Nikolay Spassky, a deputy CEO of Rosatom, said that the works on the project continue as scheduled.

The NRTC is expected to allow Bolivia to start the development of nuclear technologies to be applied in science, healthcare, geology and agriculture, among other areas. The center will be used to train personnel for the country's nuclear industry.