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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.


CSPP School of Government & Public Policy U. of Strathclyde Glasgow G1 1XQ Scotland
Email: cspp@strath.ac.uk