Outpatient clinics in suburban villages and horticultures offering free medical aid to anyone with a CHI policy.
Over 2.5 million people annually go to their dachas in St. Petersburg alone. Before we launched our project, they were completely bereft of medical aid.
According to Saint Petersburg’s Horticulture and Gardening Development Board’s data, there are over 500 thousand horticultural plots belonging to the city’s citizens in Leningrad Oblast. As during the summertime people usually take their whole families out of town, their numbers can easily exceed two million. More and more people are choosing to live on their dachas all summer and not just on their holidays. A lot of them are children and senior citizens – the very people, who may need quick and qualified medical aid most of all.
Living out of town significantly increases the chances of accidents: wounds, cuts, burns, hypothermia, snake, dog and insect bites can all pose a serious threat.
Since during the summer the population of Leningrad Oblast effectively doubles, the existing infrastructure cannot provide medical aid to all who may need it.
As part of an experiment, in the summer of 2012, clinics were opened in nine of Leningrad Oblast’s largest horticultural plots. Their services were free for everyone who had a CHI policy. Now, these clinics open annually on June 1 and work until September 30.
Divenskaya: An elderly woman that was staying alone did not leave her house for a whole day and would not respond to knocks on the door. Her worried neighbors called a doctor from our field clinic for help. After the door was unlocked, it transpired that the old woman had been unconscious for quite some time. The doctor proceeded to give the woman emergency aid and watched over her until the ambulance arrived.
Druzhnoe-3: A patient came to our clinic complaining of a strange feeling, and upon examination, a foreign body was found. The doctor sent him to a hospital in Toksovo, but they could not find anything there so, in the end, the foreign body (a fish bone) was removed inside our clinic.
