Burazeri, Genc

Latein und Griechisch in Nordrhein-Westfalen (LGNRW - E-Journal)

 Burazeri G. Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs (Editorial). SEEJPH 2019, posted: 25 October 2019. DOI 10.4119/seejph-3130    P a g e  1 | 3   EDITORIAL   Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs  Genc Burazeri1,2    1Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Medicine, Tirana, Albania;  2Department of International Health, School CAPHRI (Care and Public Health Research Institute), Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.     Corresponding author: Genc Burazeri, MD, PhD; Address: University of Medicine, Rr. “Dibres”, No. 371, Tirana, Albania; Email: genc.burazeri@maastrichtuniversity.nl     Burazeri G. Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs (Editorial). SEEJPH 2019, posted: 25 October 2019. DOI 10.4119/seejph-3130    P a g e  2 | 3  The South Eastern European Journal of Public Health (SEEJPH) continuously and successfully widens its global outreach especially to the southern and eastern world. Hence, especially in the past years, SEEJPH has placed a major focus on global health challenges and has covered health issues that transcend national boundaries calling for action in the various sectors, which determine the health of populations worldwide (1).  However, the biggest and most important neighbour in the European Region, the Russian Federation, is connected with Western and South Eastern Europe through only a few channels. One of them is the technical cooperation in the framework of the Northern Dimension Partnerships which includes the European Union (EU) member states around the Baltic Sea and Russia as a whole through its bordering North-West district including Petersburg and Kaliningrad (2). The EU and the Russian Federation contribute financially in similar dimensions.  The paper published by Chernyavskiy et al. in the current issue of SEEJPH shows that the Russian Federation has made a considerable progress in the reduction of premature mortality, contrary to western expectations (3). The detailed and robust analysis presented in this article indicates a remarkable reduction of Premature Years of Life Lost (PYLL) for the period 2003-2013 which, assuming the same pace of progress, will eventually lead into a “positive gap ratio” for the year 2020 and subsequently in 2030. Of note, a positive gap ratio indicates an “on track” status for achievement of the respective Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target (4).  Interestingly, a comparison of regions of North-Western Russia and neighbouring European countries confirmed that the higher the mortality levels the stronger the contribution of avoidable causes. Thus, on average, mortality reduction levels amounted to 50% in North-Western Russia, suggesting an impressive progress.  Among other things, this progress is due to increasing investments of the Russian government in the last decade, which have largely focused on the renovation of old health care facilities including purchasing of modern medical equipment for diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of medical conditions (5). Notwithstanding the importance of the healthcare investments in mortality reduction, this is however not the main contributor of the observed health improvements. Based on these considerations, it is from our point of view extremely important to keep communication channels open between the EU member states and the Russian Federation, at least at the professional and technical level. From this perspective, the paper by Chernyavskiy et al. (3) is timely and very relevant, providing a significant contribution on the understating of the health status progress and achievements observed in the Russian Federation in the past decades.              Burazeri G. Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs (Editorial). SEEJPH 2019, posted: 25 October 2019. DOI 10.4119/seejph-3130    P a g e  3 | 3  References  1. Jens Holst, Breckenkamp J, Burazeri, Martin-Moreno JM, Schröder-Bäck P, Laaser U. Five years of the South Eastern European Journal of Public Health (SEEJPH): Focusing on health systems in transition and global health. SEEJPH 2018; Vol X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4119/seejph-1870.  2. The Northern Dimension. https://eeas.europa.eu/diplomatic-network/northern-dimension_en (accessed: October 24, 2019). 3. Chernyavskiy V, Wenzel H, Mikhailova J, Ivanova A, Zemlyanova E, Bjegovic-Mikanovic V, Mikhailov A, Laaser U. Successful reduction of premature mortality in the Russian Federation and the countries around the Baltic Sea working together on Health and Social Well-being. SEEJPH 2019; Vol XII. DOI 10.4119/seejph-3129 4. Bjegovic-Mikanovic V, Salem ZA, Breckenkamp J, Wenzel H, Broniatowski R, Nelson C, Vukovic D, Laaser U. A gap analysis of SDG 3 and MDG 4/5 mortality health targets in the six Arabic countries of North Africa: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania. Lib J Med 2019:14/1. https://doi.org/10.1080/19932820.2019.1607698 (accessed: October 24, 2019). 5. Chernyavskiy V, Mikhailova J. Russia: A key partner in the Northern Dimension Partnership. SEEJPH 2019; Vol XII. DOI: 10.4119/UNIBI/SEEJPH-2019-217. _________________________________________________________________________  © 2019 Burazeri; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.   

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Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs

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Mortality reduction in the Russian Federation: Significant progress contrary to Western beliefs

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