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UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund |
In the autumn of 2001, for the first time in their long history,
the halls of the Russian Academy of Arts were opened for a photo exhibition.
The “Insight into the 
World
of Children” international photo exhibition was a joint project of the UN Children’s
Fund (UNICEF) and the Objective Reality Foundation.
The exhibition covered five main topics: Children and Conflicts, Children and the Law, Children and the Family, Children and Health, and Children and the Future. On the whole, it turned out to be a visual document of great social value, telling about the lives of the most vulnerable members of our society over the decade that has passed since the 1990 World Summit for Children.
This exhibition was not the first time UNICEF collaborated
with photojournalists in Russia. Last year, the Museum of Modern History was
host to the project “Russia: Age of Transition. 34, 000, 000.” (This is the
number of children now living in Russia: thirty-four million). On this occasion,
18 photojournalists from Russia, 
the
United States, and the Netherlands, along with 10- to 17-year-old students from
St. Petersburg’s F.K. Photo Club, shared their impressions of how children live
in the world of adults.
Among the contributors to the project were such well-known professionals as Lucian Perkins (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the World Press Photo Grand Prix), Vladimir Dubrovsky (another World Press Photo Grand Prix winner), Sergey Ilnitsky (winner of the Russian Press Photo Award), Geert van Kesteren (Dutch Photographer of the Year, 1998; winner of the 1998 Silver Camera Award), Jacqueline Mia Foster (another World Press Photo award winner), Oleg Nikishin (an InterPhoto award winner), and others.
Each
contributor has his or her own way of looking at people and the world, and his
or her own special style of working. However, in addition to their professionalism,
they all have one more thing in common: they feel as close to the problems of
children as they do to their own. This personal attitude – plus, of course,
their professional skill – makes their pictures true works of art with deep
social content. One would like to believe (and hope) that visitors left the
exhibition somewhat changed, with new feelings and ideas about life – and our
future, as it looked out at them from the photographs.
In addition to Moscow, the exhibition was also held in St. Petersburg.
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A major international seminar, Youth Friendly Health Services, was held recently in St. Petersburg under the auspices of UNICEF. Taking part in the seminar were representatives from nine regions of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus – directors and staffers from youth clinics, both existing and planned, and workers from government health care agencies.
“If I’m sick, I’m not about to go to a doctor”; these lines from a popular song, unfortunately, cannot serve as a model to be imitated. Health problems demand professional medical advice and intervention. A fifteen-year-old who suspects she is unintentionally pregnant will find scheduling an appointment at the local gynecologist’s office to be extremely uncomfortable. Or, if a teen thinks he or she might have a sexually-transmitted disease, registering at a clinic can be downright terrifying: they could report the illness to his or her parents, school, or institute; and generally, the patient is given a lecture in morals on the spot. Even if things have not yet reached a critical stage, one still wants the advice of a qualified professional – where can one turn, for example, to find out how best to protect oneself?
The ideal solution is a medical service that is friendly to both teens and young adults. Over the last three years, a number of such centers have been set up as part of the UNICEF program Young People`s Health and Development.
UNICEF has been working closely with St. Petersburg’s Juventa Consulting and Diagnostic Center for Children (which deals with matters of reproductive health), and Novosibirsk’s Juventus Municipal Consulting and Diagnostic Center for Children and Adolescents. Both are among the largest such institutions in Russia, and employ the most experienced of physicians. A methodological training center on the basis of Juventus in Novosibirsk prepares specialists for work in youth-friendly medical services. It offers representatives from widely diverse regions of the RF an opportunity to obtain the information and work skills needed at specialized youth clinics and offices.
With the support of UNICEF, centers such as Kaliningrad’s Teen-friendly Polyclinic (on the basis of the Regional Center for Medical Prevention), Tomsk’s Young People’s Medical Center, and Barnaul’s Youth-friendly Clinic (on the basis of the Regional AIDS Center) were opened in 2000. It is the job of these establishments to offer counseling and practical assistance to young people in matters of reproductive and sexual health (including the treatment and control of STIs), make it easier for them to obtain and use contraceptives, and to warn them of the dangers of high-risk behavior.
The concept of “adolescent medicine” is of quite recent origin. It was obvious that diseases resulting from rapid maturation, the lack of needed preventative information, and risky behavior were characteristic for this age group. The situation led to the decision to develop a network of special medical centers and clinics oriented specifically toward young people.
Experience has confirmed the correctness of this decision. Thousands of young men and women have found qualified (and, more important, friendly) medical assistance in these clinics. When making an appointment to see a doctor, one can give any name one wants, and parents or guardians are informed of a teenager’s illness only in extreme circumstances, when it is diagnosed as life-threatening. As Professor Pavel Krotin, MD and Head Physician of St. Petersburg’s Juventa Center relates, more and more adolescents are now coming to the clinic to get the preventative recommendations of a doctor, rather than emergency medical treatment.
The seminar’s organizers and participants decided to share their experiences from working to set up teen- and youth-friendly medical services, discuss different models for youth clinics, and evaluate the possibilities for expanding such services. All this was done successfully.
