PRE-PERESTROIKA HEALTH POLICY

Soviet health policy, prior to the advent of Perestroika in 1985, enumerated broad program goals based on economic exigencies. Lowering disease-specific mortality and morbidity rates were specified as goals in the Soviet five-year health plans of the 1970s and 1980s. Other principal goals included expansion of rural health services; expansion of preventive, genetic-counseling, and maternal-child services; improvement of sanitation, quality of medical care and education; increased availability, distribution, and production of pharmaceuticals and medicinal supplies; organization of specialty diagnostic centers accessible to the rural population at the republic and oblast levels. Soviet health policy research was dominated by an economic model that related health status primarily to the needs of a centralized economy (PRS 1982).