Komsomolskaya Pravda: “Best Doctor of the Year awards held in Moscow”
Health Minister Tatyana Golikova called Russia's Best Doctor of the Year awards the "Medical Oscar." The trophy awarded to the country's best doctors is a statuette of Hygiene, the goddess of health. There are thirty award categories, including Best Paediatrician, Best Therapist, and Best Military Doctor.
"A village doctor is a mother, wife, and role model all at the same time because the people know everything about her, and she is always in the public eye," said Nina Shamardina from the Krasnodar region, who won the Best Country Doctor award.
Andrei Nosyrev from the Krasnoyarsk Territory won the Best Neurologist award. He said he would use the award money to buy an apartment, as his family presently lives in a shared accommodation.
"But I will still throw a party for my colleagues," Nosyrev joked. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the government set aside cash prizes for the doctors this year. First-place winners receive 500,000 roubles, while second- and third-place winners receive 300,000 and 200,000 roubles, respectively. Russian medicine has always been known for traditions of selfless devotion, Putin said.
"This is precisely why the doctor's profession has always enjoyed great respect in Russia," he said. "This has always been seen at (history's various) turning points. In the extremely difficult conditions facing front-line hospitals, military doctors, paramedics, nurses, and orderlies put 17 million Soviet soldiers and officers back on their feet. Just think about this figure! "
Today, doctors also often have to operate in extreme conditions, the prime minister said. He noted the professionalism and selfless actions of doctors after the Nevsky Express train crash, the Moscow metro bombing, and the nightclub fire in Perm.
"We will soon mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War, and I believe it's right that we're awarding the war's medical service veterans."
The veteran doctors then took the stage – the 94-year -old Irina Vinogradova (she still works at the Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery), 96-year-old Alexander Shapovalov, a hero of three wars who was awarded personally by Marshal Zhukov at Khalkhin Goll in Mongolia, and 89-year-old ophthalmologist Veniamin Volkov. The audience stood up as the prime minister presented the awards and flowers to the veterans. Volkov asked Putin to help preserve, as he called it, the "symbol of socialism," the Fedorov Eye Clinic.
"We will try to help the centre," the prime minister responded. "But this is far from a socialist way of organising health care."
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In the meantime...
10 billion to move out of the slums
Andrei Lvov
During a meeting with Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the Housing Fund would receive additional funding from the federal budget.
"I have signed a government decree on additional measures to stimulate housing construction and the relocation of the population from dilapidated housing," Putin said. This means the fund will receive an additional 10 billion roubles.
By Larisa Kaftan
