vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #147 / Social life / Reading article...

Vladivostok's public health situation has reached a critical level, the city's public health director said July 31 at a press conference announcing that he and his 40-member department were resigning.

Vladimir Sidinko, the fifth city health department head since October 1996, blamed mayor Victor Cherepkov, saying that about 250,000 people are uninsured out of a population of 800,000.

Cherepkov, Sidinko said, has failed to finance a municipal insurance fund which pays for the city's unemployed. The fund is supposed to cover children, invalids and pensioners. And the mayor has not funded medical care overall, Sidinko said, leaving medical workers unpaid, city blood stores dangerously low, and hospitals suffering serious shortages of necessary medicines.

Employees, too, were angry. "The mayor doesn't have the right to stop financing the (insurance) fund," said Alla Lakhtikova, deputy head of the department.

In July, Cherepkov allotted only 50 million rubles ($8,770) - which medical workers spent in 10 days. The effects of this situation, said the health department head, include the increase of infectious diseases. Tuberculosis has doubled over the last five years and hepatitis has become a problem. The rate of hepatitis A infection in Vladivostok is four times higher than in the rest of Primorye and six times higher than the rest of the nation.

Neither Sidinko nor the health department would release figures on numbers of cases. And the staff are still working, saying they're waiting to find out whether the mayor will fire them. The mayor's press center said it had no comment.