12. Health Minister Blamed as Regions Hit by Medical Supply

By Oleg Liakhovich The Moscow News

 

This week, President Vladimir Putin lashed out at Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov for failing to get the government's drug benefit program up and running. Problems with implementing the program have left millions of Russians in many regions without access to life-saving medicine.

"One of the major issues that worries me now is the provision of those entitled to benefits with drugs," Putin said at a meeting with key ministers. "In early 2006 everything went right but in late 2006 there was a failure. What's going on?"

Putin specifically targeted Zurabov when he asked the minister during Monday's televised meeting with cabinet members at his residence in Novo-Ogaryovo, whether it was true that shortages of government-subsidized drugs amounted to between 30 percent and 70 percent in some regions. Zurabov defended himself by claiming there were no real shortages to speak of, citing figures that over 133 million individual drugs were distributed in Russia via benefit prescriptions in 2006 alone. According to the minister, some 80.7 million citizens have yet to be covered by the federal program. He added that while these people require expensive medicine, half of them decided in favor of the alternative monetary benefits, forfeiting the free prescriptions that led to a cash deficit at the end of 2006. The president countered that these threats could have been calculated in advance as early as the beginning of last year. "It's a sad thing that it wasn't done," Putin told Zurabov.

Addressing the finance ministry, the Russian president demanded that it provided the necessary funds whenever such need arose.

"We promised the people, so we must deliver. But, of course, we must first examine our prospects and conduct a sociological research to avoid similar failures in the future," he said.

The government allocated 34 billion rubles for the drug benefit program in 2006, but some regions found themselves facing serious supply shortages by the beginning of 2007. As the crisis loomed, the funds for the regional medical program were supposedly due to be transferred from Moscow by March, leaving millions of people doing their best to survive for two whole months without their much-needed medication. In late January, members of the legislative assembly of the Ulyanovsk region, where the situation with benefit drugs had grown critical, were forced to appeal to the president directly. The local drugstores lacked half of the necessary medicine while the rest was highly overpriced and prohibitive for most residents, the lawmakers said in their appeal to Vladimir Putin. A report by the head of healthcare and pharmacy department of the Ulyanovsk region revealed that while the 2007 budget allocated 322 million rubles to purchase medication for benefit users, the region's debt to its main pharmaceutical supplier Biotek was, in fact, over 400 million. To make matters worse, the actual demand for the drugs was twice that the budget could effectively cover.

The legislators blamed Zurabov, demanding his resignation, but the move was blocked by the majority United Russia party and their unexpected allies from the Liberal Democratic Party, led by the radical nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Relief came in the form of the Ulyanovsk region governor, Sergey Morozov, who claimed to have resolved the situation by requesting over 143.2 million rubles from the federal funds, while, at the same time, allocating the money not covered by the government program from the local budget in order to satisfy the immediate need.

Concurrently, similar problems developed in several other Russian regions, including Tula, Arkhangelsk, Sakhalin Island and Sverdlovsk. According to Channel 1, shortages of medical supplies in Yekaterinburg, the capital of Sverdlovsk region, has reached the critical stage, as the federal budget owes that region more than 1 billion rubles in financing for the purchase of the drugs. One Yekaterinburg drugstore said they have received only 60 of the 400 different medications they need, not including the drugs for entire groups of people suffering from hypertension, diabetes and a range of other ailments. In Arkhangelsk, 8.4 percent of its patients are still waiting for the benefit medication they were due to receive in early February, Alexander Gavrilov, spokesman for the regional administration's healthcare department, said in an interview with The Moscow News. Although the government has promised to provide the much-needed medicine in the following month, he admitted that to fully cover the shortages, the Arkhangelsk region would need its financing increased by 63 percent.

"The insulin shortages are especially bad," Gavrilov added. "Our governor, Nikolai Kiselyov, wrote a letter to Zurabov, asking for more funding. Meanwhile, we're implementing our own local healhcare benefit program and try to do our best to provide the local diabetics with insulin. You might say we're holding out so far."

All this has made Zurabov and his ministry an easy target for criticism, leading to increasingly frequent speculations about his imminent resignation. However, the situation may be more complex than it appears at first glance. The money owed to the regions is being withheld by the federal budget, while Zurabov himself, many experts believe, acts as a scapegoat to draw public anger away from the rest of the government and its economic reforms - to be sacrificed when the time is right.

"Zurabov is the Kremlin's most valuable stash of 'canned goods,'" commented political expert Vladimir Pribylovsky in an interview to the online news service Polit.ru

"He's one of the few cabinet members well known by the public and for that reason one of the most disliked. Zurabov is being prepared for either the parliament or the presidential elections when he will publicly "devoured." By criticizing him, the president is sending a message that he [Putin] is doing his job and is not blind to the fact that Zurabov is ripe for being sacked. But his resignation will take place no earlier than the parliament elections," concluded Pribylovsky.

In an interview to the financial news agency Finmarket, Oleg Sysuev, first deputy CEO at Alfa Bank, concurred that the future of Zurabov's career would be determined by the national elections.

"His resignation will have nothing to do with his professional qualities. He may be kept until the very elections, to make sure the sacking of this official, despised by the people, is associated with the name of [Putin's] successor," the banker said.