Translated material
RBC: The government will three times the budget of the program for the protection of the mother and child
Until 2019, the government is going to three times to reduce the costs of the program for the protection of the mother and child, RBC reports. The program was adopted three years ago to reduce the mortality of children and mothers, improve their health and prevent the transfer of HIV infection from mother to child.
It follows from the explanatory note to the budget that the agency studied, it follows that in the next three years the costs of the health of the mother and the child will be reduced to 6.1 billion rubles. Initially, it was planned to spend 17.5 billion rubles on the program. Already in 2017, her budget “Protecting the health of the mother and child from 2013 to 2020” will be cut from the planned 4.7 billion rubles to 2.1 billion rubles, the article said.
The document notes that the Ministry of Health should partially make up for the financing shortage of the health program of the mother and child at the expense of funds from other programs - in particular, it is planned to take money from the program “Improvement of the provision of specialized, including high -tech, medical care (VMP),” writes RBC.
According to the government’s plans, financing for the provision of high -tech assistance will also be sharply reduced - in 2016, 154.1 billion rubles were allocated for it, and next year only 57.6 billion rubles were planned for these purposes. A sharp reduction in the budget is explained by a change in the financing mechanism, indicated in the explanatory note. In the coming years, it was proposed to provide funds for compulsory medical insurance.
Experts warn that any reduction in budget expenses for healthcare will negatively affect society and the economy. In particular, they believe, saving on the program for the prevention of HIV infection from mother to child will increase the number of infected children, which will require the purchase of expensive children's antiretroviral drugs abroad.
According to non-profit partnership "E.V.A.", at present in Russia there are 140 thousand children born of HIV-infected. However, every year there are more and more of them. According to the study "E.V.A.", the main problem of women with HIV infection is to obtain a substitute for breast milk. According to the organization, only 25% of women receive this benefit, the rest have to buy dry milk mixtures on their own. Meanwhile, on average, their cost is 4900 rubles per month. If the costs of the subprogram are sharply reduced, it is obvious that the number of beneficiaries will also decrease.
Note that if plans to reduce costs for this subprogram of prevention are implemented, this will happen against the background of a catastrophic situation in the Russian Federation with the spread of HIV infection. In particular, in March, at the fifth conference of HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Olga Golodets reported that in 2015 93 thousand new cases of HIV infection were recorded in Russia, and the total number of HIV-infected people living in the country exceeded a million.
In October last year, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed the Ministry of Health to develop a national strategy for the fight against HIV in six months. In February, the Ministry of Health submitted a draft strategy to counteract the distribution of HIV until 2020. The main emphasis in the document was on the promotion of a healthy lifestyle and family values as one of the most important measures to prevent the spread of HIV infection, which caused a sharp criticism of the medical community.