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The USSR failed to
develop a modern pharmaceutical industry and was dependent on imports from
eastern Europe and South Asia. As a consequence, many ineffective treatments
that had either never been adopted or had long been abandoned in the West
remained routine and innovations developed in the west were not adopted. The
consequences can be seen from the way that rates of avoidable mortality, or
deaths that should not occur in the presence of timely and effective care,
remained high in Russia from the late 1960s onwards at a time when they were
falling steadily in the west.
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