Million dollar baby

An “anniversary” child was born under the birth certificate program

A computer program of the Russian Social Insurance Fund (FSS) determined that the millionth baby born ten months after the start of a new form of incentives for doctors aimed at improving the quality of their work was a girl from an average Russian family. The child was born into the Nesterov family - Andrei, a Moscow metro worker, and Natalya, a technologist at a sewing company. Little Sophia is now distinguished from other Russian children by the close attention of the official authorities, who associate all the more or less demographic surges in the country with the system of birth certificates as one of the segments of the national project “Health.”

This year, according to the Federal Social Insurance Fund, more than 1 million 300 thousand women received birth certificates, and more than 7 billion rubles were transferred to state and municipal maternity hospitals and antenatal clinics for services provided to women in labor. In the new year, the certificate, according to the head of the Social Insurance Fund Galina Karelova, is seriously changing: “It will be larger in size than a standard sheet, it will contain two additional coupons intended to pay for the services of a children's clinic, which will monitor the child in the first year of his life " Its cost will also increase - from 7 to 10 thousand rubles. 3 thousand rubles. will be allocated to stimulate the work of antenatal clinics, 6 thousand - maternity hospitals, 1 thousand - pediatricians from clinics.

Officials at the Ministry of Health and Social Development are inclined to see the slight increase in the country's birth rate, which rose by 0.2% over the nine months of this year, as the first fruits of government measures to stimulate the birth rate, rather than the seasonal surges in maternal activity among Russian women, which usually occur in March and August. Next year, according to the ministry's forecasts, about 1 million 600 thousand little Russians are expected to be born. The FSS, according to Galina Karelova, will print 2 million forms of birth certificates.

However, the mother of the millionth baby and her more experienced “colleagues” in motherhood admit that they give birth according to the call of their hearts, and not according to government orders. “In general, we want a large family,” Natalya Nesterova told Vremya Novostey. - Sonechka is our long-awaited first-born, we couldn’t give birth to a child for five years, we were treated in many clinics, we even went to the south. The last time we underwent a course of treatment and were observed by a doctor at the Lyubertsy maternity hospital, here at my place of registration I began to give birth.”

As the birth certificate suggests, Natalya Nesterova had a choice of where the child would be born, but reviews of the nearest maternity hospital spoke in her favor. According to the chief physician of the Lyubertsy maternity hospital, Tatyana Melnik, people from Moscow and the Moscow region have always come to give birth to them: last year, even before the birth certificate system began, 3,975 babies were born here - more than in other areas of the Central region.

Most women still try to choose a maternity hospital “by registration”. “I gave birth to my first child 14 years ago in Moscow,” Nadezhda Fonechkina, who had just given birth to her third child, told Vremya Novostei. “The second one was seven and a half years ago here in Lyubertsy.” According to her, she didn’t notice much difference in the way the medical staff treated her between the capital and suburban medical institutions, so she decided to give birth closer to home. Some women even prefer to do without a certificate. “There are not many of them, but some women say that the certificate is useless to them,” complained Lilia Tyrnova, deputy chief physician of the Lyubertsy maternity hospital. “They come to give birth without him.”

At the same time, the Social Insurance Fund assures that about 90% of all women giving birth in Russia are covered by certificates. “The system does not include those who did not register with the antenatal clinic early,” explained Galina Karelova. Homeless people who do not have documents and do not particularly care about their women’s health give birth without a state birth certificate. Wealthy Russian women who prefer paid clinics and alternative methods of childbirth also manage without certificates. “Services are paid only in state and municipal maternity and consulting medical institutions,” Ms. Karelova recalled in an interview with a Vremya Novostei correspondent. “However, by decision of the municipal authorities, if the area does not have its own maternity hospitals and antenatal clinics, we will pay for the services of departmental clinics.” But, according to her, this does not cause concern, since there are few such settlements in the country - about five small villages in Siberia, located along the BAM line, where departmental medical institutions of RAO Russian Railways operate.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO