Health and Disease in Russia. Term Paper

Between 1995-2002, 99% of all births in Russia were attended by skilled health personnel, while the number of physicians per 100,000 people was 420 between 1990-2003, and the number of people with sustainable access to affordable essential drugs in 1999 was between 50-79% (http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_RUS.html)."

Nutrition, Water and Smoking

The United Nations reports that in 2000, 99% of Russia's population had "sustainable access to an improved water source. Between 1999-2001, 4% of the population was undernourished, while between 1995-2002 of all children under the age of 5, 3% were underweight and 13% were under height for their age group. From 1998-2002, 6% of all infants in Russia were born with low birth weight (http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_RUS.html)."

One of the leading, preventable health risks is smoking.

In 2000, 10% of all adult Russian women smoked, compared to 63% of all adult men (http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_RUS.html)." This illustrates why men may be more likely to suffer from additional health complications than their female counterparts.

Coping With Poverty

Russian households in recent years have found they have to adapt in order to survive under Russia's new government. Research has shown that "a household's choice of survival strategy strongly depends on its human capital: the higher its level of human capital, the more likely it is to choose an active strategy (such as finding a supplementary job or increasing home production).

Households with low levels of human capital, those headed by pensioners, and those whose members have low levels of education are more likely to suffer social exclusion.To prevent poverty from becoming entrenched, it has been recommended that the trend toward marginalization and impoverishment of these groups of households be monitored and targeted policy interventions be undertaken to reverse the trend (http://econ.worldbank.org/working_papers/1417/)."

Conclusion

Russia has seen a number of changes in its health and disease statistics in the past decade. By evaluating these statistics, as well as factors which improve its citizen's quality of life, it is hoped that Russia while overcome its stratification of classes and realize better health and life expectancies.

References

Lokshin, Michael M. And Ruslan Yemtsov. (26 February, 2001). "Household Strategies for Coping with Poverty and Social Exclusion in Post-Crisis Russia." The World Bank

Group. (accessed 28 February 2005). http://econ.worldbank.org/working_papers/1417/).

UN Development Programme. (accessed 28 February 2005). http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/cty/cty_f_RUS.html).

WHO. (accessed 28 February 2005). http://www.who.int/countries/rus/en/).

Zuger, Abigail. (05 December, 2000). "Infectious Diseases Rising Again in Russia." The New

York Times. (accessed 28 February 2005). http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/05/science/05INFE.html?ex=1109739600&en=2a56df9be6a07c13&ei=5070)......