Hospital Provision
| Region | beds per 10,000 inhabitants | % Russian mean |
| Far East | 138 | 110 |
| Volgo-Vyatka | 138 | 110 |
| East Siberia | 134 | 106 |
| Urals | 133 | 106 |
| Northern | 130 | 103 |
| Central Black Earth | 129 | 102 |
| Central | 128 | 102 |
| RUSSIAN MEAN | 126 | 100 |
| West Siberia | 124 | 98 |
| Volga | 124 | 98 |
| North Caucasus | 109 | 87 |
| North-west | 108 | 86 |
| Source: Rossijskij Statisticheskij Ezhegodnik [Russian Statistical Yearbook], 1996. |
Health is a basic human concern, and in a modern society hospitals are a major resource for restoring people to health when they are seriously ill. A welfare state is committed to providing health care for all its population, wherever they may live--or at least, to making hospital care equally accessible to people who live in poorer regions and richer regions.
The distribution of hospital beds shows a very high degree of equality throughout the Russian Federation, according to a standard measure of beds per ten thousand inhabitants. The regions with the most beds, the Far East and Volgo-Vyatka, are only 10 percent above the national mean, and the region with relatively fewest beds, the North-west, is only 14 percent below the norm.
However, life expectancy statistics (male and female) emphasize that building hospitals is not a sufficient guarantee of health.