OREANDA-NEWS. November 10, 2011. “As we have said more than once, the regional authorities must always keep watch over utility rates in order to prevent anyone from getting their hands into customers’ pockets.”

Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

Let’s begin with an update. Our data on healthcare is good for the nine months of this year. This is partly owing to the implementation of the Healthcare national project.

The death rate from cardio-vascular diseases has dropped by more than 7%, from traffic accidents by almost 5.5% (5.4%) and from cancer by 1.6% – this is not much but it's still an improvement. Ms Golikova, what can you add to this?

Tatyana Golikova: Mr Putin, colleagues, in the first nine months of this year the overall death rate has decreased by 5.9% compared with the similar period last year. The death rate from alcoholic poisoning has dropped by 16% and from TB by 7.2%. As for cardio-vascular diseases, if we divide them into two groups – heart attacks and strokes – the figures come out different. The decrease in the death rate from heart attacks is 5.6% as you mentioned, and from strokes, 12.1%. Our figures on strokes have never been so good. The death rate from cancer has dropped by 1.6% and from traffic accidents by 5.4%.

But I’d like to draw your attention to a different point. As you know, each year 14 or 15 regions take part in various healthcare programmes. The statistics for the first nine months of this year reveal how much the death rate has decreased in the regions that take part in the profile programmes – in Moscow is has dropped by 21.7% and in the Lipetsk Region by 17.6%. The Ryazan Region has brought down the death rate from traffic accidents by 42.6% as compared with the national average of 5.4%.

Vladimir Putin: Is this the death rate from traffic accidents?

Tatyana Golikova: Yes. The relevant figure for the Voronezh Region is 27.4%. As for cancer, the Republic of Mordovia has decreased the death rate by 14.4% and the Tambov Region by 11.8%, although the relevant national average is 1.6%. A major oncological centre will be opened in the Tambov Region in December, I believe, around the middle of that month. They have invested their own money and federal budgetary funds into it and will have a very good facility for helping cancer patients.

One more area to which I’d like to draw your attention is high-tech medical aid, both to adults and children.