Komsomolskaya Pravda: “Physicians promised higher salaries”
Over the next two years, the government will spend 460 billion roubles on healthcare.
Yesterday was the Day of Medical Workers in Russia. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came to the Prizvaniye ("Calling") awards ceremony to congratulate physicians on their professional holiday.
"We have always been proud of our medicine," the prime minister began. "In the past few years, we managed to reach certain progress. Of course, we have more unresolved problems in medicine than resolved ones, but last year we saw natural population growth for the first time in Russia's modern history."
Other positive changes have also been made. Lifespan in Russia went up 4 years over the last five years, reaching 69 years.
"The birth rate is slowly but stably growing while the mortality rate is declining thanks largely to your efforts," Putin told the audience.
The next two years will bring changes to the Russian healthcare system, including modernisation efforts and higher salaries for physicians.
"We will spend 460 billion roubles on healthcare in 2011 and 2012," the prime minister said. "Part of this money will be used to increase physicians' salaries."
"I hope we will see a lot of talented physicians in the future - heroes and explorers who will invent new treatment and diagnostic methods and save thousands of lives," Minister of Healthcare and Social Development Tatyana Golikova said.
There were quite a number of real heroes at the awards ceremony that day. For example, a group of physicians led by chief of heart surgery Kirill Barbukhatti was awarded "for performing a unique operation." Last autumn, they spent eight hours operating on a patient who was brought to the hospital with numerous incisions and puncture wounds. When the operation was almost complete, it turned out that there was no more donor blood of his rare type left in the hospital. Barbukhatti himself gave almost a liter of his own blood to the patient saving his life.
* * *
On Saturday Vladimir Putin visited the Moscow Business Centre for the Disabled, which employs over 900 disabled people, mostly with vision impairments. The employees work over the telephone, providing information services and receiving orders for food deliveries. But their primary job is manning hotlines.
"Visually impaired and blind people work here," the centre's head Alexei Denezhkin explained to the prime minister. "Their workplaces have special equipment that allows them to work just like any other people."
Putin spent some time speaking with the centre's employees, who asked the prime minister for a favour: they want government agencies to use their services more often to create more jobs for disabled people.
"I absolutely agree with you, I will work with them," Putin promised. "Every year I spend time answering calls directly from the people. The services of companies like yours are very much in demand."
By Yevgeny Belyakov
