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Number of children receiving high-tech medical aid up 60 prcnt since 2009

Medvedev said financing of the regional programs of healthcare system modernization ran into over 664 billion rubles /USD 1=RUB 30.9/ in 2011 and 2012

MOSCOW, April 17 (Itar-Tass) – Number of children who have received high-tech medical aid has grown 60% since 2009, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday as he addressed deputies of the State Duma with a report on the government’s operations.

“And recall that many of these children would be considered incurably ill just fairly recently,” he said.

He underlined the importance of expanding the high-tech medical assistance programs so as to slash the length of the patients’ waiting lists and to enable more Russians to take courses of treatment at Russian clinics instead of going abroad.

Medvedev said financing of the regional programs of healthcare system modernization ran into over 664 billion rubles /USD 1=RUB 30.9/ in 2011 and 2012.

“As a result, construction of more than 70 hospitals and outpatient clinics has been completed, while almost 2,700 medical outlets have undergone an overhaul,” he said.

More than 290,000 units of technology have been purchased, Medvedev said to illustrate the achievements scored as a result of implementation of the program.

In addition to this, almost 8,000 young physicians have taken up jobs at rural health centers. Their remunerations have stood at around 8 billion rubles.

A sweeping program of construction of high-tech medical centers was completed in 2012.

“We launched it slightly more than six years ago and the accessibility of the surgeries provided there has grown immeasurably /by a factor of seven - Itar-Tass/,” Medvedev said. “A patient doesn’t need to make a trip to Moscow now to get high-tech treatment.”

At present, federal medical centers are working in twelve regions of Russia.

“Technologies in the most highly demanded areas of healthcare - cardiovascular surgery, traumatic surgery, orthopedics, endoprosthesis, and neurosurgery - have been put on stream in practical terms,” Medvedev said.