Russia is a country of focus for the Drink Driving and Noncommercial Alcohol initiatives of Global Actions on Harmful Drinking.
Drink Driving: After conducting initial discussions with international partners, ICAP is developing capacity-building modules in preparation for pilot training to be conducted in Russia in the September through December 2010 time frame. An international, cross-functional senior advisory group is assisting ICAP in the design of the initiative. Training and a launch event will be scheduled for the latter part of 2010. In addition, briefings with senior government officials and industry representatives are now being conducted.
Background: The current situation was assessed as follows by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his speech at First Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety (November 19, 2009, Moscow):
“…Today, when I looked through the materials prepared for our forum, our conference, I once again realized for myself that the numbers are simply amazing – depressing if you prefer. Despite the fact that they probably have already been cited today I cannot but repeat them: more than 3,500 people are killed every day in road accidents. Different sources state that every year more than a million people (of which 1 in 5 are children) are killed throughout the world. In other words, every year we lose one big city, a metropolis. More than 50 million people are injured and crippled. If we do nothing to reverse this trend, then according to at least these estimates, to the data we have, by 2020 road accidents will become the third most serious threat to human health, along with circulatory system diseases and certain other problems….
In Russia, we have approved a National Strategy to improve road safety. Since 2006 we have had a federal target programme designed to reduce the number of car accident victims by half compared to 2004. Nevertheless, the situation in this area is very bad. Last year, nearly 30,000 people were killed on Russian roads. Despite the many measures we have taken, things have not improved as much as we would like. …
Why did I cite all these measures which seem like local, sort of purely Russian? I am sure that there is much to work on within our international cooperation. I am also sure that similar problems, at least some of them, exist in a number of countries represented here. Therefore, exchanging experiences in this regard is extremely important….” (For full text see: http://www.1300000.net/Dmitry_Medvedev.en.html.)
Noncommercial Alcohol: The focus of our work in Russia (as in all nine countries that are part of this initiative) is to measure the extent and nature of noncommercial alcohol production and consumption, help set the agenda for interventions at national and regional levels, and launch a program of action to reduce problems.
Upon completion of a pilot study, we are now working with local researchers in the implementation of an expanded study.
We will report progress regularly, so please visit this page again soon for ongoing updates on our efforts.