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The President looked over several of the institute’s departments before the meeting and also visited a telemedicine centre for remote consultations, training seminars, videoconferences and symposiums with doctors from other regions.

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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Colleagues, I give you all my warmest greetings,

It certainly is very interesting to have this chance to visit you, first of all, because the Emergency Medicine Institute is a cutting-edge research institute with professionals of the highest level, people who, as we just said, are at their jobs round the clock.

Professional success only comes to those who hone their craft, those who perform operations and other medical services constantly, and not just now and then. In this sense, your institute, the emergency medicine hospital, as people used to call it when I lived in St Petersburg, has built up very solid traditions over the years and earned great respect from the city residents and from the huge number of people who have received treatment here. 

We had the opportunity just now to look around the institute. I was last here about 17–18 years ago now. Of course, the building has not grown any younger since then, but there have been what I think are some very big changes in terms of how the medical treatment system is organised and the equipment at your disposal.

Back then, nobody could even have dreamed of this kind of technology of course, but even the treatment process from the moment patients arrive at the hospital looks completely different now. I want to hear from you today about the problems of course, about what still needs to be done. After all, emergency medicine is a very specific field, and you know the situation better than anyone.

Change and new approaches must reach through the whole emergency medicine system in general. Change must reach not just to your institute that is at the forefront of the sector’s development, but to the way emergency medicine is practised throughout the entire country, in central district hospitals, and in the most unsuitable places, on the roads, everywhere and anywhere where medical help is needed. As for the procedures and guidelines to follow, these are things that will be in large measure tried and approved here within these walls.

Let’s talk about this. We can talk too about the strange weather that has brought St Petersburg plus 13 degrees Celsius [55.4 degrees F] on November 2, and we can discuss wages and social protection issues, since the top bosses have come from Moscow today to be here. I am referring not to myself, but to the deputy prime minister, the city governor, and the presidential plenipotentiary envoy. I therefore invite you all to take part in the discussion.

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