News Analysis
Russia: counter-revolution, disease and deathWORKERS, JAN 2007 ISSUE
The economic destruction following the counter-revolutions in Russia and Eastern Europe over the past 20 years has increased poverty, unemployment and inequality, all of which take their toll on workers' health. The capitalist governments have imposed large cuts in health and welfare spending, hospital closures and a drastic decline in the numbers of preventive check-ups and home visits.
Russia's gross investment fell by more than three-quarters between 1989 and 1996, while net fixed investment has been negative since 1995. The new capitalists have looted Russia's natural wealth, exported its commodities and energy, stripped its assets and exported their takings. There has been no investment in health, education, science, industry or agriculture. Just 1 per cent of GNP is spent on health.
There are epidemics of tuberculosis and HIV. From the 1950s, infant mortality was consistently reduced and immunisation rates were high. But now in Ukraine, for instance, only a third of infants are vaccinated.
Life expectancy has fallen in almost all of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. In Russia, it is just 58 years for men (down from 63.5 in 1991). Russia's population has fallen by six million since 1992. Birth rates slumped, from 10.9 per 1,000 in 1992 to 8.8 per 1,000 in 1996 – just four years. Death rates soared, from 12.2 per 1,000 in 1992 to 15.7 per 1,000 in 1994, only two years. The suicide rate rose from 26.5 per 100,000 in 1991 to 45 per 100,000 in 1995.
Catastrophe
These catastrophic death and disease rates are unprecedented in a developed country in peacetime. Articles in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet analysed the statistics, but did not mention the huge rise in unemployment, the fall in living standards and the consequent huge increase in social stress. Two-thirds of the population are worse off; 40 per cent have been forced below the poverty line.
Family breakdown, divorce and drugs put more and more children at risk. There are growing numbers of homeless children. Only 30 per cent of newborn children are healthy; 50 die every day because of poor equipment and training in maternity hospitals. Russia's infant mortality rate rose from 17.4 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 19.9 per 1,000 in 1993.The number of disabled children has doubled since 1995, while the number of paediatricians has shrunk by 10,000. The government is adding to the problem by retraining paediatricians as GPs and cutting spending for family planning advice.
Leonid Roshal, Russia's foremost paediatrician, says, "For a decade the World Bank has been paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to reform the health system, but it's just destroying it. Western specialists come here, they analyse the system, get money for it, they give recommendations, then they conduct seminars – more money – they live on this money for Russia, and then Russia has to pay for them. If they had just given all that money we could have equipped every maternity hospital in the country, built some new labs, bought new ambulances. Instead that cash has just run into the sand."