"Each new generation's health is worse than the previous one's," Bokeria stressed, noting that the Russian population continues to dwindle at a rate of 800,000 each year.
"In this situation, we deem it important to create various mechanisms for coping with the nation's deteriorating health," Bokeria continued. A person's life style accounts for 55 percent of all factors affecting his or her health, he said.
Mr. Bokeria believes that the forum must attach priority to creating a system that would popularize a healthy way of life.
A national-health map will be unveiled during the forum, reflecting the state of health care, the environment, education and sports in various Russian territories.
"The Russian-health map will be presented only at the forum and we are not going to use some of its statistics at random because many statistics are for office use only," Mr. Bokeria said.
Mr. Bokeria also noted that the situation in the Far Eastern and Volga federal districts (the Nizhny Novgorod region included) is extremely unfavorable. The Novgorod region, which boasts the required potential for expanding cardiovascular surgery, continues to lose its position rather steadily, Mr. Bokeria noted.
"We are quite happy about progress in the Krasnodar territory, the Perm region and Rostov," Mr. Bokeria said. The situation in the Central and Northwestern federal districts is beginning to normalize, he said.
