Government approves plan to improve mortality rate in Russia

The Cabinet approved a new program Thursday to fight diseases such as diabetes, tuberculosis, AIDS and cancer that bear part of the blame for Russia's steadily shrinking population count, reports said.

The population fell by more than 560,000 last year to 142.2 million, a new post-Soviet low, the state statistics agency said.

President Vladimir Putin has lamented the persistent population decline, which has come despite the largely oil-fueled economic growth that has rejuvenated Russia and helped some of its citizens prosper during his presidency.

He has focused on increasing the birthrate, encouraging childbirth by establishing subsidies for parents starting with their second child, but deaths continue to outnumber births and life expectancy remains brutally short, particularly for men.

Life expectancy for men in 2005 was 58.9 years, 15-20 years shorter than in the United States, France and Japan, a Health and Social Development Ministry official said.

For women, it was 72.3 years _ four to seven years shorter than in the U.S., France and Japan, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The suicide rate in Russia is rising, the official said, with nearly 40,000 people killing themselves each year, and deaths outpace births by at least 50 percent in most parts of Russia, ITAR-Tass reported.

Low living standards and financial worries aggravate stress and lead to unhealthy behavior, domestic violence and psychological problems, the agency quoted the unidentified official as saying.

The new five-year financing plans aims to bring down the mortality rate by targeting disease.

The program for 2007-2011 is to be financed with 76.4 billion rubles (US$2.9 billion; euro2.2 billion), more than half of it from regional budgets, ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti quoted Health and Social Development Minister Mikhail Zurabov as saying.