A respected former Russian finance minister said the nation’s economy is stagnating and the government needs to invest more in education and health in order to drive growth […]
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Russia’s healthcare system was already working at full capacity before coronavirus. We spoke to one of the people organising Russian healthcare workers on workloads, optimisation and wages. (Opendemocracy.net – Elena Platonova – March 25, 2020) Elena Platonova is a journalist and correspondent for the finance section of the Russian publication Gazeta.ru. She researches and writes on education, gender and migration, […]
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KALININGRAD. Oct 31 (Interfax) – Healthcare expenditures in Russia will continue growing and will constitute 4.1% of GDP next year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said while meeting with the public of the Kaliningrad Region on Thursday. “We will increase our financing of healthcare. If this year, it totaled 3.7% of GDP, then next they, this will be 4.1% of GDP. […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Matthew Luxmoore – MOSCOW, Oct. 1, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/staff-at-russia-s-main-cancer-center-quit-en-masse-citing-low-wages-and-dire-conditions/30193826.html) Russia’s main cancer treatment center has been rocked by a wave of resignations amid complaints about low wages and deteriorating conditions at its wards, in the latest indication of what medical professionals say is […]
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“… as tens of thousands of protesters once again took to the streets in Moscow to protest upcoming municipal elections, Russian state television showed a smiling … Putin riding with … [a] motorcycle club in Crimea. … a typical scene … the president doing tough guy stuff at the location of his most popular act of [the] annexation of Crimea. […]
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“… In these 11 stories … Dr. Osipov, a Russian cardiologist, fiction writer and playwright, regards the field of medicine as though it were a hapless production of a surrealist play. … [T]he borders between hope, delusion and dishonesty are hazy and heavily trafficked. … Dr. Osipov is a master of dramatic irony, wringing bittersweet humor from what the reader […]
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(Kremlin.ru – July 23, 2018 – en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/58086) Vladimir Putin had a working meeting with Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova, who briefed him on the implementation of new promising programmes aimed at preventing various diseases and providing quality medical services. The President and the Minister also discussed the development of exports of medical services and the treatment of oncological diseases. President of […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 21, 2018) Vladimir Putin and his country are in far deeper trouble than the Moscow media he controls or than the Western media which all too often relies on what the Putin outlets say and views his standing and that of his country almost exclusively as a derivative of what the […]
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MOSCOW. April 20 (Interfax) – Russia must take efficient measures to swiftly make available in its market domestically produced medicinal drugs to secure itself from a possible halt of U.S. imports, State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said. “The U.S. has around 50 billion rubles of annual net profit from supplying pharmaceuticals to our country,” Volodin told reporters on Friday after […]
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“… offering Russians the biggest increase in domestic spending in years … what [Putin] won’t be talking much about is the package of tax hikes, benefit cuts and other changes … to help pay for [it] … possible increases to the pension age and the income tax … cuts in tax breaks for staples like food … [and] co-pays for […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 7, 2017) Russian authorities will unroll healthcare reform nationwide in time for presidential elections next year, the Vedomosti newspaper reported, citing a source close to the Kremlin. The Health Ministry says the organizational reforms for clinics, which were piloted last year, can reduce waiting times twelve-fold and boost consumer satisfaction by 10-15 percent. Implementation […]
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(Kremlin.ru – March 21, 2017) Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Presidential Council for Strategic Development and Priority Projects at the Kremlin. Participants in the meeting reviewed progress in the implementation of priority projects in healthcare, as well as measures aimed at enhancing labour efficiency. Transcript of the meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and Priority Projects President […]
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A new World Bank report shifts from the usual criticism of Russian dependence on raw materials toward the nation’s need to invest more in the population in order for them to be best prepared for the challenges of modernity. (Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – KIRA KALININA, RBTH – January 18, 2017) In a break from past reports, the […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, October 16, 2016) Aggression in Russian society is “changing qualitatively,” Aleksey Tarasov says, with ordinary Russians now regularly attacking and even killing doctors and others whom they would never have lifted a finger against in the past and with an increasing share of Russians accepting this as the new normal. As a […]
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TULA. Sept 8 (Interfax) – While manufacturing the hi-tech civil products, the Russian military-industrial complex should target the needs of the healthcare, energy, aircraft and ship construction, space and information technology sectors, it is unacceptable to produce frying pans on high-grade equipment, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “Our military-industrial complex certainly has the potential to meet these challenges, it possesses […]
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The doctor is out. Hunger strikes, mistreatment of patients and general desperation are beginning to seem like a feature – as opposed to a bug – of Russia’s healthcare system. (opendemocracy.net – Artur Asafyev – April 28, 2016) Artur Asafyev is a freelance correspondent for Radio Svoboda and Novaya Gazeta in Ufa, Bashkortostan. He has worked as a journalist since […]
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(Kremlin.ru – March 10, 2016) Late the previous evening, the President had a working meeting with Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Ms Skvortsova, we agreed that you will tell me about the current situation, the year-end results and the results of work in the first quarter – the last two months. Healthcare Minister Veronika Skvortsova: Thank […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – February 1, 2016) As the ruble continues its catastrophic tumble, hitting another historic low last month, the pain is being felt keenly across Russia. Among those worst hit are patients in need of urgent surgery abroad or other life-saving treatment billed in foreign currencies. “It all started with a bad cough and a […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Claire Bigg – August 23, 2015) When Yulia Koptseva heard about a Russian government plan to ban a range of foreign-made medical goods, she had a single, urgent thought: “I want my daughter to live.” That was also the poignant comment she left on an online petition that has gathered almost 10,000 signatures against the proposal, […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer – May 13, 2015) Expectant mothers in Moscow must wait as long as six weeks for ultra-sound scans, up from three days last year. Hospital outpatients pay for blood tests and X-rays that were free 12 months ago. And Marif Alekberov, a 27-year-old fireman with leukemia, is being told to find […]
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Changes to the Russian national health care system have proceeded according to an obscure logic and led to very mixed results for medical personnel — and sometimes to lethal results for patients. The authorities wanted to optimize and modernize the system by boosting the quality of medical care and making it more accessible. Instead, medical care has become inaccessible for a large part of the population, especially in rural areas: doctors labor under increased workloads, thereby compromising patient care; mortality […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – April 15, 2015) Russia’s attempts to reform its health services have resulted in a larger number of people in hospitals dying and an increased mortality rate in the country in general, a report by the government’s accounting agency said. The hospital mortality rate increased by 2.6 percent last year compared to the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – March 27, 2015) The cost of medicine is rising fast in Russia, hitting consumers and challenging a government that has made its reputation as a bulwark of social stability. The ruble’s fall of nearly 40 percent to the U.S. dollar and 22 percent to the euro since the beginning of 2014 has sent […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – December 1, 2014) More than a thousand health care workers took to the capital’s streets Sunday to keep the pressure on authorities amid ongoing medical reforms that critics say are being conducted for financial gain over anything else. The reforms, which were initiated by President Vladimir Putin upon his return to the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Allison Quinn – October 30, 2014) When President Vladimir Putin made a law on health care reform one of his first acts after returning to the presidency in May 2012, medical professionals and members of the public alike nodded their heads in approval, all too aware of the flaws and chaos inherent in the existing […]
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(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova, Anna Arutunyan – February 17, 2014) The shocking suicide of a Navy admiral has prompted official investigations into the bureaucratic hurdles Russian cancer patients face when trying to obtain pain medication. According to the experts, administrative problems, a lingering Soviet mentality and a misguided drug policy are to blame for continued lack of […]
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(Kremlin.ru – January 21, 2014) Vladimir Putin held a meeting to discuss healthcare development and the implementation of the Presidential Executive Orders signed in May 2012. Special attention was given to the need to reduce inefficient spending in healthcare and improve the efficiency of medical institutions, as well as issues pertaining to wages in the healthcare sector. PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – January 22, 2014) President Vladimir Putin touted public-private partnership, as a means for revitalizing the threadbare public health care system at a meeting with top ministers Tuesday. The sector clearly demands investment, but simply raising the rates that individuals and companies pay into the state’s obligatory medical insurance fund is not an […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Delphine d’Amora – December 9, 2013) The Russian diplomats and their spouses charged with fraudulently claiming a total of $1.5 million from a U.S. government health care program are all to return to Russia, a news report said Monday. Only 11 of the 49 defendants are still on American soil, and they too will soon […]
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