The Problem of Maintenence the Health of the Rural Population of Khakassia: Objective and Subjective Factors
Authors: Lushnikova Ol’ga L. 
Published: June 2020

The Object of the Study. Rural population of Khakassia. The Subject of the Study. Theoretical Aspect of the Subject. The problem of maintenance the health of the rural population. Empirical Aspect of the subject. Objective and subjective factors that determine the ability of rural people to maintain health and a healthy lifestyle. The Purpose of the Study. Analysis of conditions for maintaining health and maintaining a healthy lifestyle of the rural population of Khakassia. The Main Provisions of the Article. The article analyzes the objective conditions for preserving the health of the rural population of Khakassia, mainly the availability of medical services. On the one hand, according to the health care reform, the number of hospital beds, places in day hospitals and secondary medical personnel decreases. But on the other hand, quality of service improves: the number of hospital organizations in rural areas of the region remains; the material and technical condition of medical assistant's and obstetric point improve (37 ones were built between 2010 and 2018); the number of doctors in rural areas increases. The results of a survey of rural population aged 18 years and older we used for analyze of subjective factors playing a significant role in maintaining the health of rural population of the Khakassia. The survey was conducted in 2018 in all rural areas of Khakassia (the sample is quota – based: by gender and age, n=1000). The survey is devoted to social problems of the rural population of the region. Part of the questions reflects the population's attitude to health care and aspects of maintaining a healthy lifestyle (we used questions from the questionnaire “Life world of Russians”, the block “About health and the environment” by Zh. T. Toshchenko). According to the results, villagers who have serious diseases are more often seek medical help, other villagers do this quite rarely. The main reasons for non-conversion are associated with a low level of trust in doctors and medicine in general, the idea that "good treatment is only for money". Among the specific claims to rural health care: the lack of narrow specialists, the need to wait in queues, lack of equipment, territorial inaccessibility of medical service. However, it is difficult to say that health for rural residents of Khakassia is of particular value. Part of villagers despite of the presence of serious diseases, doesn’t tend to lead a healthy lifestyle, in particular eat correctly and quit bad habits (for example, smoking or drinking alcohol). Alcoholism is particularly acute for the young population. The results showed that there are quite a lot of drinkers among women of reproductive age (from 18 to 34 years), and a lot of drinkers among men of the age group (from 25 to 54 years). It leads to a disappointing conclusion about the opportunities for the reproduction of a healthy rural population. The main ways of improving the health of rural residents are increasing the living standards and quality of life of the population.