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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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