Wealth, Urbanization, and Small Populations Make Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets ADs Best Places to Have Children in Russia Today, ‘To Be Precise’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 30 – Wealth from the extraction of natural resources, extraordinarily high rates of urbanization, and small populations make the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets Administrative Districts the best places to give birth in the Russian Federation, according to a rqanking compiled by the To Be Precise portal.

            The portal rated the regions on the basis of nine indicators ranging from maternal and infant mortality rates to the availability of obstetricians, pediatricians and neonatologists and highlighted both differences among the federal subjects and continuing problems with available data (tochno.st/materials/gde-lucse-rozat-reiting-kacestva-rodovspomozeniia-v-regionax-rossii).

            At the top of the ranking were the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous districts, largely the result of three factors. Both are wealthy areas because of their natural resources, both have high urbanization rates which make access to care easier, and both have small populations which mean that women can get access to larger medical infrastructure.

            They rank as far better places for giving birth than Moscow, which ranks seventh, and St. Petersburg, which ranks 11^th, in part because women with serious problems are often sent there for birthing but do not survive and thus depress this rating of the treatment of women ready to give birth.

            At the other end of the ranking are Ulyanovsk Oblast and the Buryat Republic. In the first case, this may be an artefact of statistics: hospitals there appear to assign as stillbirths what are classified as deaths from infant mortality; but in the second, there is a severe shortage of hospital beds and doctors.

            To Be Precise found that the existence of federal medical centers in the regions can either improve the ranking of the federal subjects or depress it. These provide better medical care than do ordinary hospitals; but because they do, especially ill women are often sent there and despite this care die more often.

            But many of the most serious differences in the impact of childbirth are rooted in geography and the lack of an adequate transportation network. Predominately rural regions rank lower than more urbanized ones; and even among those where care is good in cities, women in rural areas can’t get to the cities for timely care because of infrastructure problems.