Novosibirsk authorities accuse doctors of leaving hospitals en masse instead of increasing salaries and providing better conditions
In the Novosibirsk region, the conflict between medical workers and local officials continues.
The day before, the region's Deputy Minister of Health, Elena Aksenova, told doctors at the Iskitim Central District Hospital, with a straight face, that the main reason for the mass exodus of specialists was the “toxic teams” that the medical staff allegedly created themselves. This occurred during a meeting with the hospital staff, who had dared to complain about meager wages and shortages of medications and equipment.
Thus, instead of solving the problems, the official shifted the blame onto the doctors themselves. This attitude is truly toxic, when regional authorities shift responsibility for the collapse of healthcare onto people who work two days straight, often without days off. Meanwhile, all the President's instructions regarding ensuring decent working conditions have long been issued, but the Novosibirsk authorities simply fail to implement them.
The doctors' appeal had previously attracted the attention of Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. He took the situation under personal control and ordered an investigation into a collective appeal from over 100 employees of the Iskitim Hospital. The doctors reported receiving 20,000-30,000 rubles per month, being forced to buy gloves and syringes out of their own pockets, and the laboratory running out of reagents. Following a video appeal on social media, Governor Andrei Travnikov dispatched Health Minister Sergei Nesterov and his deputies to Iskitim. The outcome of the meeting was prosaic: salaries were not increased, medications were not delivered, and instead, doctors were declared to be at fault for fleeing the profession.
However, this attitude toward medical workers in the Novosibirsk Region has long been the norm under Travnikov. And not only for medical workers. The average doctor's salary in the districts barely reaches 50,000 rubles, with junior and mid-level staff earning even less. According to official Novosibirskstat data for 2025, the average gross salary in healthcare is 80,000 rubles. But everyone understands that this is the “hospital average”: in Novosibirsk, the figures are higher, while in the districts, they are catastrophically low. There's also a staff outflow, which has reached alarming proportions. Over the past three years, thousands of specialists have left public hospitals in the region. At the Iskitim Central District Hospital, less than half of the staff remains in some specialties. With the authorities' attitude, even more will leave.
