And every third girl is sick with a female disease

demography Yesterday, at the board of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Deputy Minister of Health Olga Sharapova said that over the past five years the number of diseases affecting the reproductive ability of women has increased. The health of girls is of particular concern.
Now in Russia, about 5 million couples cannot have children for health reasons. The total number of women in the country, as of January last year, is 76.9 million, of which 9.3 million are teenage girls, that is, potential mothers, and 38.8 million women of reproductive age. In both of these groups, there is a high incidence rate of sexually transmitted infections; The figures for children and adolescents are particularly striking. For example, in 2000, 18.8 thousand such patients were registered among them. Over the past ten years, the number of children under the age of 14 suffering from syphilis has increased 112 times. Almost 13 thousand teenagers 15-20 years old are infected with HIV. Director of the Scientific Center for Children's Health of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Alexander Baranov, said that the reproductive health of adolescents living in iodine-deficient areas is significantly deteriorating. And Yuri Gurkin, head of the department of pediatric and adolescent gynecology at the St. Petersburg Pediatric Medical Academy, called teenage girls “the nation’s golden fund,” but said that 300 girls out of every thousand suffer from gynecological diseases.
But, according to Deputy Minister of Health of the Russian Federation Olga Sharapova, the number of abortions has decreased over the past five years by 1.3 times, maternal mortality from abortions has decreased by 17.6%, and the number of abortions in girls under 14 has decreased by 40%. According to the deputy minister, artificial terminations of pregnancy have become less common because domestic women have finally learned to use contraception.
The result of the analysis of both negative and positive trends in the expanded reproduction of the population of the Russian Federation was standard: experts agreed that it is necessary to increase wages for gynecologists, obstetricians and midwives. Then Russian women will be able to more successfully increase the number of Russian citizens.

ELENA Kommersant-VANSOVICH

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 72 dated April 24, 2002, p. 7

In Russia, 5 million couples cannot give birth