About HealthProm
HealthProm works in partnership with healthcare professionals in The Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent Sates to improve health and social care so that vulnerable groups in society can:
- give birth safely
- benefit from community-based mental health care
- receive treatment in hospital that does not expose them to further infection
- die with dignity
CIS countries inherited centralised healthcare systems from the Soviet Union, with an over-dependence on 'specialists' and under-developed community care and public health information provision. Despite marked variations and a decade of dramatic political, social and economic change, many concerns are common to health reformers across the region.
Health sector budgets have been cut by an average of 50 per cent in the last decade, which is why HealthProm's programmes are pivotal in increasing efficiency and developing services that respond more flexibly to actual needs, focusing increasingly on preventative and community-based medicine.
HealthProm's work may not grab the headlines every day, but since 1984 HealthProm has worked with its partners to make a real and tangible difference - often between life and death - to thousands of people in the former Soviet Union. Why not take a few minutes to see the impact that HealthProm could make to thousands more people with your help...
Our history
Formed in 1984, HealthProm is the leading British charity with experience in improving the standard of health care provision in the former Soviet Union (FSU).
Since 1992 HealthProm has developed over 100 successful partnership projects with reforming city and regional health departments, medical institutes and hospitals, based on an excellent reputation for projects that deliver sustainable results and for setting high standards of good practice and cultural sensitivity.
The experience and networks of its volunteers in the UK - health professionals who often offer their services on a voluntary basis - together with the support of country specialists and colleagues in the FSU renders HealthProm uniquely qualified for its task of improving healthcare for the most vulnerable communities of the Russian Federation and independent republics.
Starting in St Petersburg in 1992, HealthProm worked with the regional health administration to establish an adolsecent crisis service for the early assessment, treatment and education of children living on the street. The successes of this partnership have now been extended to Sverdlovsk Oblast and parts of Ukraine. HealthProm's Infection Control Programme partnership with Togliatti Maternity Hospital No. 2, resulted in a 50 per cent reduction in neonatal infections over a three-year period.
Over the past decade, HealthProm's Safe Motherhood Programme has trained health professionals and educated communities about safe sex, childbirth and parenting throughout Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The Cancer and Palliative Care Programme has similarly facilitated dramatic improvements in holistic care for thousands of people with terminal illnesses in the Uliyanovsk region of Russia and parts of Ukraine, through further training of professionals and volunteers and the production of educational materials in Russian.