The meeting was held at the Government’s Situation Centre to discuss the implementation of regional healthcare modernisation programmes, top priority programmes for reducing road-accident injury and death rates and social benefits for the birth of a third baby.

Minister of Healthcare Veronika Skvortsova and Minister of Labour and Social Development Maxim Topilin took part in the meeting. Ms Skvortsova noted that, to date, 52% of the healthcare modernisation programme’s allocations had been spent. Ms Golodets responded by asking for everything possible to be done in order to spend the remaining allocations and to implement modernisation programmes by the end of the year. “Please tell us if there are any setbacks, and we will help you,” the deputy prime minister added.

In regard to road-accident injury and death rates, Olga Golodets requested regional governments to adopt emergency measures so as to reduce the number of road accidents. These measures will help solve the problem without involving road reconstruction and road resurfacing projects, which are both time and labour-consuming. The Deputy Prime Minister said these measures should stipulate the deployment of additional traffic police outposts and a more rapid ambulance response along the most problem-ridden motorways.

There are plans to start issuing social benefits for the birth of a third child from January 1, 2013. During the discussion, regional representatives inquired about  federal budget co-funding criteria. Olga Golodets therefore instructed Minister of Labour and Social Development Maxim Topilin to clarify the principle for issuing benefits, making it possible to calculate subsidies for every region. The principle itself is to be clarified pending the next, July 26, teleconference. Ms Golodets said the clarification was needed today, so that regional governments would be able to reserve the required volume of their own child-benefit allocations, while drafting the 2013 budget. Maxim Topilin said in response that 50 Russian regions would be eligible for federal budget subsidies. He then added that federal budget allocations might account for 60-65% of co-financing programmes, and that in some cases the allocations may reach up to 90%.