Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and natural resources 2016 number 6S

In the context of social and market-based economy, a new type of economic relations has been developing in Russia, as sociated with a fundamentally different approach to the responsibility for the population’s health improvement. Moreover, the society has adopted a new outlook on many traditional things, even established concepts in science are subject to revisiting or changes, and health therefore acquires not only the status of social value, but also an important economic resource (or asset) of the society. Based on the synthesis of the achieved level of quality of life and economic well-being, the public health factor mea sures progress in socio-economic development of the country. The article considers the personnel’s health as a valuable resource and its key role in the development of the Irkutsk Sci entific Center, SB RAS. We conducted morbidity study and analyzed its structure including incidence, prevalence, susceptibility to disease as the main indications of the employees’ health. The analysis results revealed that in the structure of morbidity, cardiovascular diseases (CVD) take the highest rank, being a major cause of morbidity, disability and mortality in most countries; the second leading position in the structure of morbidity is occupied by respiratory diseases, reflecting the environmental factors that contribute to the disease progression. The majority of cardiovascular diseases can be prevented by taking reasonable measures against such risk factors as to bacco use, unhealthy diets and obesity, physical inactivity, high blood pressure, diabetes and elevated lipid levels. The most effective way to combat the disease have always been its timely diagnosis and prevention. These allow one to dramatically reduce the risk of CVD and increase life expectancy by about 10-15 years. The factors that are potentially dangerous to human health and that promote the incidence of cardiovascular diseases (smoking, overweight, diabetes mellitus, etc.) have been studied, with their prevalence revealed in the group of the ISC SB RAS employees, registered with the ISC SB RAS Hospital for regular health services. The results of a molecular genetic tests that had 30 leading members of ISC SB RAS provided valuable information about their predisposition to various diseases, including CVD. Having revealed subgroups of patients with/no hypertension, it was possible quite confidently differentiate between the groups with chronic kidney disease and with type 2 diabetes. The conclusion to be drawn is that health is governed by both genetic and environmental factors. The research has shown that health problems of the population are multifactorial and a comprehensive approach is recom mended in addressing the problems of public health preservation as a fundamental component of human asset and improvement of the population’s health.