RUSSIA, February 1 - Agenda: Implementation of initiatives on healthcare, education, social assistance, migration and public administration.

Excerpts from the transcript:

Mikhail Mishustin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We are continuing a series of meetings on implementing strategic socioeconomic development initiatives. Today, we will listen to reports by my deputies – Tatyana Golikova, Alexei Overchuk and Dmitry Grigorenko. They will present detailed reports on what has already been done in the projects they supervise and tell us about their plans for the future.

Let’s start with social initiatives.

Our priority is to improve the living standards of our people. Naturally, it is the people who will assess the results of our efforts.

We have launched the Social Treasury initiative. The main task is to create a fair, targeted support system for the people. The people who really need this support should receive it – quickly and without much trouble, as the President instructed.

We started introducing the new approach last year. We provided 11 support measures proactively, without any applications. These included the maternity capital certificate, and lump sum payments for children and pensioners, 65 million people in all.

By 2030, we must move all types of assistance – federal, regional and municipal – to a uniform standard so that they can be received without red tape via integrated centres or the government services website. And, of course, the time for processing these documents should be reduced from several days to several minutes.

Another major area is protecting public health. The initiative on the country’s sanitary shield, which is carried out at the President’s decision, has become a response to the Covid pandemic and potential future challenges.

We must learn to act in advance, to predict risks. If new viruses appear, we must quickly use vaccines and diagnostic tools.

We have professionals for this – epidemiologists, scientists and experts. We will supply them with everything they need for their work. And we will continue building modern infection centres and laboratories in the Russian regions.

In addition to countering the coronavirus, it is necessary to continue resolving other healthcare problems that are of particular concern to people, for instance, primary care. This system is facing a tremendous challenge. It is under an enormous strain. Doctors are helping many patients, but so far, their number has been increasing every day.

It is already time to make decisions to ensure more comfortable and quicker assistance in outpatient clinics, and not only during such serious trials but in normal life. It is important to adopt an individual approach to treating patients. Modern technology should simplify the process of making appointments, and issuing conclusions and prescriptions. It is essential to reduce the waiting time for appointments with specialised doctors and, of course, rid the medical personnel of paperwork and endless reports.

The pandemic-related experience shows the importance of post-disease rehabilitation. Consequently, the President has instructed us to draft and implement a programme for developing the medical rehabilitation system. This sphere now requires advanced approaches. Under the relevant initiative, it is necessary to create a modern infrastructure for this, so that patients can undergo medical rehabilitation at all stages of their treatment. In the next few years, 60 percent of medical organisations implementing medical rehabilitation projects will have to be provided with the necessary equipment, and we will have to train specialists in this field. People should really be able to afford this treatment. 

The development of medical science will provide the healthcare system with additional capabilities and new tools. Yet another initiative is aimed at accomplishing this task.

By pooling the efforts of all participants, including medical education institutions, scientists and production facilities, we will launch advanced research and development projects and speed up the introduction of the newest and most popular treatment methods.

I would like to focus on several other projects in the social sphere.

Under the Professional Education initiative, we will continue to improve education standards for college students, so that they will meet market demand to the greatest possible extent. In this way, graduates will be able to find well-paid jobs more quickly, and enterprises will resolve their HR issues.

In the next two or three years, we will have to set up 210 education and production clusters in the most in-demand industries. They will bring together colleges and employers. Each of them will get 100 million roubles’ worth of federal-budget funding to buy modern teaching equipment and draft new curricula. We will attract almost 4.5 billion roubles using extra-budgetary sources. 

Everyone is already familiar with another initiative called the Pushkin Card that the Government introduced last year at the President’s instruction. Young people aged between 14 and 22 will be able to use this card to buy tickets for exhibitions, performances and concerts. From 1 February, it will be possible to buy tickets for Russian films using this card.

At the same time, we are providing favourable circumstances for people to be able to unlock their own creative potential. Under the Conceived in Russia initiative, we are establishing a system to support the creative sector; the system helps generate ideas, create products that are in high demand, and sell them on international markets.

The initiative should spur the development of the creative industries sector, which is developing rapidly all over the world.

Ms Golikova (addressing Tatyana Golikova), you oversee all these eight initiatives. Please tell us more about specific results and future steps.

Tatyana Golikova: Mr Mishustin, colleagues.

The Government’s social initiatives are aimed at achieving benchmarks of four of the country’s national development goals, specifically, Protecting the Population, Health and Well-Being; Self-Realisation and Talent Development; Honourable and Effective Labour and Successful Entrepreneurship, and Digital Transformation.

It is the individual who is in the focus of each of the initiatives. Regular feedback helps us to promptly adjust our decisions.

The world has been living with the pandemic for two years. For many decades, humanity has not seen such a lasting health hazard that causes deaths, economic loss and sometimes forces us to make decisions with no alternative. Learning from this experience, we have developed and approved a federal project called Sanitary Shield to protect public health and fend off infections.

The project is to create an effective barrier against epidemics on three frontiers: inside the country, in our connections with neighbours and countries further abroad. People get fast, accessible and quality diagnostics, comfortable sanitary control at the border, and opportunities to live, study, work and travel without restrictions.

In 2021, we developed seven tests for one-hour diagnostics of five infections. Four of these tests are already in mass production, while two more are about to reach the production stage. We provided for the operation of 14 sequencing centres and supplied equipment to eight new centres. We developed the first national digital platform for data sequencing. We reinforced 15 PCR centres, doubling lab capacity, which reduced testing times and ensured that test results are uploaded quicker to the Gosuslugi public services website (a feature used by 24 million). We developed operation guidelines for various industries during the pandemic.

We will continue this work in 2022 and expand the network for researching dangerous infections in other regions of the world, for the purpose of better and faster prognosis. We will build four platforms for the accelerated development of safe and effective vaccines against new infections.  

By 2024, 80 percent of the population will have access to tests that can be ready within 24 hours. We will implement rapid tests for 43 infections, thus providing faster medical care.  

To be continued.