Press Release, 4.04.2019

Emilia Slabunova, Chair of the Yabloko party, offered to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to set up a state programme to identify diseases related to unfavourable environmental situation.

According to Slabunova, the data on these diseases will ensure truly sustainable development of the territories, adequate goals and objectives for the health care system, as well as help to predict the development of the demographic situation.

Emilia Slabunova notes in her address to Prime Minister: The Strategy for Environmental Security of Russia until 2025, approved by the President in 2017, states that environment in Russian cities and their suburbs, where 74 per cent of the population lives, is significantly affected by industrial, energy and transport facilities, and  from 30 up to 40 per cent of the population regularly use water that does not meet hygienic standards.

Due to contamination of drinking water with chemicals and microorganisms, the risk of mortality increases by approximately 11,000 cases annually, and morbidity rises by 3 million cases a year on the avaerage, Slabunova stresses.

Diseases associated with unfavourable environmental situation affect all organs and systems of the body: the number of patients with immune, nervous, endocrine diseases, chronic nonspecific respiratory diseases, pathologies of reproductive function and pathologies of newborns rises, and as a result there is an increase in the number of detected cancers, Emilia Slabunova writes.

The Ministry of Health annually prepares a report analysing how the rights of residents to health care and timely medical assistance are ensured. However, the report does not contain data on the indicators that link morbidity with environmental situation.

“I am asking you to give a commission for developing a state programme for identification of environmentally related diseases,” the letter by Emilia Slabunova runs.

Yabloko believes that the state should create as soon as possible an environmental strategy that will envisage rejection of harmful and outdated technologies and industries, development of alternative energy, transition to recycling of waste, adoption of a programme to identify diseases related to unfavourable environmental situation, and identify morbidity associated with environmental degradation. According to Yabloko, independent experts, political parties, representatives of environmental and public organisations must be involved in developing such a strategy.