LONDON (Reuters Health) - Whatever budget and state health programmes the Russian government adopts, none of them can make people healthy if they do not look after themselves, Russia's Minister of Health, Yuriy Shevchenko, said on Wednesday.

Shevchenko called on the population to take more responsibility for its health. In an interview with the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Wednesday, he said that people are able to protect their health with "mentality, conscience and knowledge."

Shevchenko used this formula to argue that people should stop being "dependent" on the state, not expect very many free medical treatments and get accustomed to the necessity of paying for healthcare.

Free medical services are still guaranteed by the Russian Constitution, but it has become a widespread practice for doctors and medical staff in many Russian hospitals to ask patients to pay for services that are supposed to be free.

Today the state does not have enough money to reimburse costs of high-tech and expensive medical treatments for everybody, the Minister stressed.

On this basis, a rationing system exists in provinces that do not have their own facilities and have to make arrangements with hospitals in large cities, first of all in Moscow, to send their local patients for medical treatments.

He added that promotion of private medical insurance in addition to obligatory medical insurance, for which all working people pay 3.2% of their wages, could be useful to tackle the problem.

The Minister advised the population to give up bad habits such as smoking and excessive drinking of alcohol, and spend more money on healthy foods and less money on medicines unless they are vital and particularly on aggressively promoted food supplements.

Reference Source 89

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