Russia Not Producing Enough High-Quality Prosthetic Devices to Meet Growing Need, Medical Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 16 -- Every year, more than 70,000 Russians have one or another extremity amputated and need to be fitted with a prosthetic device. Now, Putin’s war in Ukraine is boosting that number but so far not by more than a few hundred. Nonetheless, the difficulties veterans are facing in this regard has called attention to the larger problem.

            The Soviet government was not able to produce enough prosthetic devices to meet the need, as anyone who visited the USSR can attest. And this shortfall meant that many wounded veterans from World War II and industrial accidents were forced to do without, often in public in ways all could see.

            Since 1991, Daily Storm journalist Yevgeniya Chernyavskaya says, the Russian government has sought to address this problem by importing ready-made Western models and by developing Russia’s own ability to produce prosthetic devices often by importing Western components (dailystorm.ru/obschestvo/zhizn-posle-amputacii-kak-v-rossii-ustroena-sistema-protezirovaniya

            But perhaps the most important step forward was the adoption in 2008 of a law guaranteeing military amputees full government support for the provision and support of the prosthetic devices they need, something Moscow had not done up to that time (consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_76051/92d969e26a4326c5d02fa79b8f9cf4994ee5633b).

            Often this meant the purchase of prosthetic devices from abroad or even the dispatch to foreign countries of Russians needing them, and even more often, it meant that the Russian government imported ready-made Western prosthetics or the key component parts, especially of the most advanced bionic kind.

            That arrangement worked relatively well in the absence of a major military conflict which generated demand for prosthetics and of sanctions that blocked Russians from importing prosthetics or prosthetic parts from more advanced Western countries. Now, with Putin’s war in Ukraine, there is greater demand; but with sanctions, importing such items has largely stopped.

            As a result, the gap between demand and supply is widening; and the failure of Russian firms to produce enough prosthetics on their own is becoming obvious not only to healthcare activists but to academic experts who say that Moscow must address the problem or face the likelihood that amputees will soon be more numerous and more visible.

            Should that happen, the costs of Putin’s war in Ukraine will become ever more obvious; and anger about it ever greater.