Medical Care in Putin's Russia

"A very natural thing is happening."
"The worsening economy, the declining real wages, is souring public opinion."
Ekaterina Schulmann, political scientist

"I voted for Putin, we all voted for Putin."
"I never thought I would have to protest."
Dr. Yuri I. Korovin, 61, Okulovka, Russia

Yuri Korovin

Between the Seychelles and Greece, Russia ranks 73rd in the world in per capita gross domestic product. This year, Russia's state statistics agency released a survey that about a third of the Russian population was unable to afford a spare pair of shoes to take them through the winter. Russians have tolerated because they have little choice, five years of declining wages adjusted for inflation.

Russians focus now on the disconnect between Russia's rise abroad and the reality of its stagnating home economy.

The Kremlin has been busy securing a place of influence for itself in the Middle East. Helping Syria prosecute a murderous war against its own rebellious civilians along sectarian divisions is costly not only in lives but in munitions and aerial support of Syrian state troops, as well as establishing a Russian sea port and air base in the embattled Middle East nation.

If state funding is directed toward this outward display of Russian might what is left to support the local economy?

Moscow's war in Ukraine in support of ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebels and its securing of the Crimean Peninsula, earning Russia crippling economic sanctions and falling trade ties, its 'argument' with Great Britain over poisoning ex-spies, and Vladimir Putin's love/hate affair with the White House administration of Donald Trump, no less accusations of cyber-espionage and political mischief in the affairs of other countries' elections have done the country no favours.

Russia's economy suffers but who suffers the most is the Russian population. No amount of treasury was spared in proudly unveiling Russia's new generation of ICBMs and other instruments of war. A strike was organized recently by a new doctors' union, highlighting that physicians and ambulance medics have been pushed to labour action resulting from poor pay, garbage disposal issues, crumbling infrastructure and a drop in the quality of medical care.

In rural Russia, doctors like Dr. Korovin from Novgorod, Okulovka, where he is the only doctor in his near region, are paid an annual salary of $8,670. For an hour-and-a-half operation, after-hours (when he is paid more) treating a man with a stab wound in his lower abdomen, his pay was 500 rubles ($7.70). Paid out of Russia's state-run insurance program.

Doctors and nurses demanded during their strike that local authorities fulfill a decree signed by President Putin that doctors be paid twice the average salary of the region where they work -- which would amount in the Novgorod region to 744,000 rubles, or $11,448 annually, well above Dr. Korovin's current take-home pay.

Should the government react by firing the doctors there would be no health professionals left to treat the population. Provincial towns and cities are facing a situation as it is, where doctors are leaving in droves, hoping that employment in areas in and around major cities will earn them a living wage. Hospitals in the Novgorod region have 229 openings for doctors, and no takers.

Dr. Korovin, a soft-spoken man with a mop of white hair and a surgeon's skilled hands, mentions he has treated just about everyone in town. On a recent day, he examined an older man who had broken a rib in a fall, then tended another man's cut foot. He removed City Council member Andrey Karpusenko's appendix a few years earlier.

"Of course, we need to raise salaries", agreed Mr. Karpusenko. But given Russia's current economic straits no one is expecting the health workers' protests to influence any change in the situation.

Photo: Alexey Sukhorukov / RIA Novosti