An Arctic Medical Centre to serve the Northern Sea Route will be opened in Murmansk, Russia. It will be organized on the basis of the Murmansk Multidisciplinary Medical Centre named after Nikolay Pirogov.
Besides, outpatient clinics and other medical facilities are to be built on the Centre’s territories in Pevek, Sabetta, Tiksi and Dikson, Murmansk Multidisciplinary Medical Centre (MMC) director said.
Even today, sick sailors on the Northern Sea Route (NSR) are not left without treatment. All nuclear-powered icebreakers leading vessels along the NSR have medical units where MMC doctors treat crew members. In 2023, bedside monitors, mobile ultrasound machines, a digital portable X-ray machine, an inhalation anesthesia machine, laboratory equipment, defibrillators, oxygen concentrators and other equipment for medical units were purchased.
If necessary, seafarers are evacuated to major medical centres of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA), a federal executive body responsible for the functions of rendering government services and managing state property in healthcare.
However, there is a problem of staff shortage. It is difficult to find doctors willing to go to sea for six months or even more. The establishment of onshore medical centres will allow medical personnel to be engaged on a rotational basis.
Source: Rossiyskaya Gazeta [ The Russian newspaper]
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