MOSCOW
(Reuters) - Officials painted a worsening picture of Russians"
health Tuesday, blaming poor social conditions and too much drinking
and smoking. "This year passed under the sign of Russians"
health getting worse and forces us, doctors, to talk about a national
catastrophe," Interfax news agency quoted Oleg Shchepin of
the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, as saying.
He was speaking
at a Health Ministry meeting called to discuss the health care
situation in Russia in the last year. Shchepin said overall life
expectancy fell one year in 1999 to 65.5 years. Men lived an average
59.8 years and women 72. The general level of illness had risen
15 percent while the number of people considered as invalids had
risen three times over the last 10 years. The death rate was 14.7
people per 1,000 while the birth rate stood at 8.4 per 1,000,
Shchepin said. A report by the Statistics Office put 1998 figures
at 13.6 and 8.8 respectively.
RIA news agency
quoted hematologist Andrei Vorobyev as saying at the meeting that
one of the main reasons for the worsening figures were smoking
and vodka, which resulted in more cancer cases, heart problems
and death due to accidents.
Many Russians
became much poorer after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with
wages not keeping pace with rising prices for food and health
care. Life expectancy in the former Soviet Union was around 64.3.
It fell to a low of 57.6 in 1994. Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko
was quoted as telling the meeting that the health issue needed
to be discussed by the Security Council, the top advisory body
to President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has
rung alarm bells for Russia"s quickly shrinking population,
saying the nation"s survival was under threat.
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