Council of Medical Collegia

the first central public-health administrative body in the RSFSR. The Council of Medical Collegia was established on Jan. 24, 1918, by a decree issued by the Council of People’s Commissars and signed by V. I. Lenin. The chairman of the council was A. N. Vinokurov, and the deputy chairmen were V. M. Velichkina (Bonch-Bruevich) and M. I. Barsukov.

The establishment of the Council of Medical Collegia was the first attempt to centralize the public-health administrative bodies in existence in prerevolutionary Russia. The council operated through medical collegia that had been established in late 1917 under the auspices of the people’s commissariats for social security, education, railroads, and internal affairs and were made up of Bolshevik physicians. The council directed the organization of local medical and public-health departments of the soviets of workers’, peasants’, and soldiers’ deputies, headed the control of epidemics, convened the First All-Russian Congress of Public-Health Departments, and helped found the Scientific Medical Council, which subsequently functioned under the People’s Commissariat for Public Health of the RSFSR. The Council of Medical Collegia had committees on tuberculosis (chairman, Z. P. Solov’ev), venereal diseases (chairman, I. S. Veger), epidemics (chairman, D. K. Zabolotnyi), and neuropsychiatric diseases (chairman, P. P. Kashchenko).

The functions of the Council of Medical Collegia were transferred to the People’s Commissariat for Public Health upon the latter’s establishment on July 11,1918.