“Get your sleigh ready in summer,” a folk saying goes. Ukrainian government officials are lending ear to the advice and are beginning to plan in winter how children will spend their summer vacations. Children’s recreation and health improvement in 2007 and 2008 were on the agenda on one of the first Government Days this year. Youth, Family, and Sports Minister Viktor Korzh said that in 2006 only 47 percent of schoolchildren were able to improve their health and that the whole recreation and health improvement system remains as problematic, debatable, and equivocal as before.
Almost five million children study in over 20,000 schools in Ukraine. In principle, every schoolchild has the right to health-improving summer recreation but the summer of 2006 was, in general, not very exciting for Ukrainian children. According to official statistics, around 18,000 health improvement institutions were opened for children. But 16,000 of them are of the day-care type.
In his report for the Verkhovna Rada Korzh stated that in 2006 around two million children went to health improvement camps and another half a million schoolchildren to health resorts and spas for children. “Unfortunately, today we cannot refuse to set up camps affiliated with educational institutions, educational institutions other than schools, and health resorts,” the minister said. “ The current network of health improvement institutions located outside the city limits is incapable of meeting children’s health needs because Ukraine in general has a deficit of such institutions and the financing for the restoration and development of this network is also lacking.”
In the summer of 2006 less than three million schoolchildren were able to go to recreation and health improvement institutions. This trend can be traced from one year to another. In 2005 the facilities of children health resorts and children camps located outside the city limits enabled around 60 percent of children aged 7 to 16 to improve their health. Day-care institutions make the biggest contribution to preserving and developing the network of recreation and health improvement facilities for children, but their capacity decreases with each passing year and new children camps that provide room and board are not being built in Ukraine.
Most children summer camps are located, as before, within the city limits. Typically, these are summer camps at schools that opened only in June. This is convenient and affordable for parents, but children prefer camps located outside the city limits. In 2006 the Ministry for Youth, Family, and Sports admitted that despite all efforts, they failed to bring about radical changes in the children health improvement system: approximately 95 percent of schoolchildren had health problems and required full-fledged treatment at health resorts rather than just health improvement. In 2005 children spent an average of 18 days in camps outside the city limits, a four-day increase from the previous year. In 2006 three more days were added to the figure, but in 2007 no increase is anticipated.
In 2006 children recreation was not without scandals. According to Korzh, the sanitary-hygienic service issued 352 warnings but 25 institutions accepted children regardless. “In more than one hundred institutions across Ukraine and in 70 percent of the inspected camps and health resorts, a number of violations were discovered such as insufficient ingredients in dishes, below-the- norm portion weight, deviations from the cooking procedure instructions, and low quality of products,” said the minister. “In the Kyiv oblast violations of this kind have been detected in 90 percent of children health improvement institutions.”
In the sphere of children recreation quality is directly dependent on the amount of money invested. “The overall volumes of financing for the purposes of children health improvement and recreation amounted to 720 million hryvnias,” said Korzh. “There is a positive trend toward allocating more finances, primarily from municipal budgets. In 2006 there was a 37 percent increase.” According to the minister, this trend is anticipated in 2007 and the finances earmarked in Ukraine’s state budget for these purposes have been paid out in full. Nonetheless, high prices for health resort vouchers remain one of the biggest problems in children recreation. The prices depend not so much of the general condition of the facilities as on their proximity to a forest or body of water. Parents pay around 1,000 hryvnias to send a child to a camp for three weeks. For gifted children, honors students, and orphans recreation remains free of charge, with financing provided by state enterprises and ministries. In such cases parents can turn to the regional or district administrations for issues of family, youth, and sports or directly to the ministry, but state resources available for this purpose are also limited.
The minister said that the reasons preventing Ukrainian children from receiving normal recreation and health-improvement services are the lack of legal support and inadequate measures by local authorities to preserve the network of respective institutions. In camps and other institutions children lack qualified teachers or doctors and recreation itself is carried out without the necessary educational component. Resolving these issues will enable to provide health-improvement services to a greater number of children. However, the minister was silent on how the ministry is going to address these questions. Hopefully, by the beginning of the vacation time officials will be able to not only complain about drawbacks, but at least offer a sound plan of action.
