For three weeks in June 1979,I was a guest of the Government of the USSR, under the terms of the US-USSR exchange program for scholars. The 1979 trip included visits to Children's Polyclinics, Children's Hospitals, a nursery-kindergarten, a sanatorium for handicapped children, Women's Consultation Clinics, maternity hospitals, Institutes of Pediatrics, and of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
CHILDREN'S POLYCLINICS
Primary health care of the 70 million infants and children from birth to 15 years of age in the USSR is provided by a network of 13,000 Children's Polyclinics. Each Children's Polyclinic serves a caseload of 13,000 to 20,000 children. An individual Children's Hospital in a geographic area is affiliated with a number of Children's Polyclinics located within that geographic area. The provision of hospital beds for children amounts to approximately 12 to 13 per 10,000 people. In the entire USSR there are 454,000 pediatric beds, of which 160,000 are in sanatoria for