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According to Goscomstat data the leading cause of death is the group
of cardiovascular diseases, and nothing changes during past ten years --
each second Russian dies due to a heart problem.
St. Augustine:
... Human heart does not find a rest to itself, until it
will not find a sense and fulfill its own promise...
(I cite the ancient author from "The Will
to Meaning" by V. Frankl)
Occasional alcohol poisoning
leads to just one out of a hundred deaths (12 percent of all accident deaths,
which comprise 14 percent of all deaths in 2000). Thus, it is impossible
to approve alcohol and other external causes the leading cause of death,
just on the contrary. The structure of mortality varies in a long run,
for example, during demographic transition, and it is rather stable on
short intervals. There is no visible change in past ten years.
From the report of the President of Russian Federation Commission on
women, family and demography "Current situation with mortality in Russian
Federation" (issued according to the decision of a Commission Feb. 2, 1997):
... protracted and continuing during more than three decades'
stagnation of archaic structure of death causes and stemmed from it mortality
growth and decline in life expectancy is an indisputable attribute of the
crisis of old social system, and an arguments for its reform, though the
reform occurs extremely painful for the population...
(the report is available on the runet)
The image depicting the causes of death of the labor force population,
shows that the leading cause is a group of diseases (?) consisting of accidents,
poisoning and trauma, moreover each 20th Russian (in labor force), died
in 2002, had been killed. It is a good indicator revealing that the health
care system impact on life expectancy is insignificant. Those in labor
force who are close to health care (mothers) experience a drop in mortality.
Mostly Russians live very hard, but not for long (as the candidate to the
president
of Belarus said), and it is similar for all countries formerly were
the USSR (see here).
This very similarity of post-communist populations makes some experts
speak out about a socialist type of mortality, thus, to proceed from a
medical fixation (of a cause of death): what from? - to a sociological
reasoning: why? Unlike former, it is hardly possible to answer the latter
question directly, but it is important to discriminate between them, and
make all feasible precautions to avoid a substitution of one by another.
Even attempting to answer sociologically enables one to imagine and probably
find out the conditions, which may help Russia to reduce a lag in life
expectancy (from more advances nations and between genders).
I (together with St. Augustine) consider a new code of procedures
for criminal investigation, a law invoking land ownership, and a rule of
a law in general more instrumental to reduce the level of mortality than
any innovation in health care administration.