Picture of the day: digest of the main news from June 11, 2025
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#1 A twofold increase in the budget for social payments to primary care physicians helped reduce the outflow of physicians from rural areas and small towns in 2024, said Ilya Balanin, head of the Federal Compulsory Medical Insurance Fund. The increase in the size of monthly payments for physicians from sparsely populated areas, which occurred in April 2024, led to an increase in the annual social support budget from 82 to 158 billion rubles, which, together with other measures, contributed to the arrival of about 4.3 thousand physicians and 4.5 thousand mid-level specialists in rural areas and small towns. Earlier, Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko reported on a similar effect, noting a 7-8 percent increase in the staffing of physicians after the introduction of payments.
#2 The Russian Ministry of Health has developed and presented for public discussion the Procedure for providing consultations to insured persons by representatives of health insurance organizations (HIO) when filing claims against clinics in the event of poor-quality medical care or refusal to provide it with the collection of funds. The regulator may receive the relevant powers from September 1, 2025. The presented regulation contains only 10 points that describe the rules for filing an application for a consultation, as well as a list of documents that the HMO can use to consult the insured. The new procedure, if approved, will come into force on the same day.
Exclusively
In May 2025, the 11th Congress of the Russian Society of Medical Geneticists was held in St. Petersburg, where Robert J. Desnik, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, professor, founder of the Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, took part as an invited expert. He was at the forefront of developing treatment methods for several lysosomal pathologies, including Fabry disease. Vademecum asked Dr. Desnik about the history of studying this orphan disease, the development of diagnostic and treatment methods, genomic cloning tools, as well as the state and prospects for developing a support system for patients with genetic diseases. The results of the conversation are in our material .
Organization of medical care
The State Duma held a "government hour" dedicated to protecting the health of schoolchildren. In addition to parliamentarians, the discussion was attended by the head of the Russian Ministry of Health Mikhail Murashko and the head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova. Murashko noted that the department has identified a trend towards the progression of a number of diseases in minors: an increase in gastrointestinal pathologies, posture problems, scoliosis, and diseases of the eyes and adnexa. The minister is also alarmed by the increase in the number of obese children to 480 thousand people, which is associated with a sedentary lifestyle and the lack of interest in physical education and sports among many schoolchildren.
Incidents
Deputy Prosecutor General Igor Tkachev filed a lawsuit against the Union of Theatre Workers (STD) and JSC Meditsina (Academician Roytberg Clinic). The Prosecutor General's Office believes that STD and JSC entered into an "antisocial deal" in 2017. The supervisory agency demands that the lease agreement for the building received by STD in 1993 from Moscow be declared null and void, and the entry in the Unified State Register of Real Estate on JSC Meditsina's lease rights to the premises of the capital construction project be declared invalid. The defendants have not yet publicly commented on the situation.
Medical services market
The Rostov-on-Don administration announced the planned construction of a multifunctional medical center with outpatient and inpatient services. The Medscan group of companies will implement the project, the cost of which is estimated at 1.9 billion rubles. Rostov IFC Aval will act as a co-investor. The clinic will be opened after the reconstruction of an existing building with an area of 6,234 sq. m. The medical center will accommodate a 30-bed hospital, three operating rooms, intensive care units and an endoscopy department. The clinic is designed for both adults and children. The preliminary opening date is the II-III quarters of 2026.
Infrastructure
The Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation presented the results of the audit of the construction of the Sevastopol Emergency Hospital, which they have been trying to build since 2016. The audit showed low efficiency of spending budget funds and technical readiness of the facility. During the project implementation, the price increased by 61.6% (to 12.5 billion rubles), while as of January 1, 2025, readiness was only 16.1%.
International agenda
On June 10, 2025, at a hearing in the US Senate on labor, health, and human services during the discussion of the 2026 budget, Jai Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spoke about the planned reduction of NIH funding by 40% (minus $17.97 billion) and the abolition of 19 institutes within the structure (from 27 to 8). Bhattacharya explained the need for NIH restructuring by the "politicization of science" observed in recent years. As an example, the head of NIH cited research in the field of medical care for members of the LGBT community (recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation). Senators and experts, in turn, expressed concerns about the termination of support for research into Alzheimer's disease and HIV infection.
Other news:
Former head of Kemerovo Health Ministry sent to pretrial detention center
Samara State Medical University will be able to conduct clinical trials of drugs in three new areas
Merck vaccine approved for use in US to prevent respiratory syndrome in infants
Novo Nordisk to conduct new clinical trials of obesity drug CagriSema
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