UNCLASSIFIED implementation a long-term state policy is being pursued in the sphere of protecting the health of citizens. The strategic aims of this policy are: -- to increase longevity, lower the level of disability and mortality in the population, and increase the size of the population; -- to improve the availability and quality of medical assistance; -- to improve the vertical system for monitoring the quality, effectiveness, and safety of medicines; -- to observe citizens’ rights in the sphere of health protection and to ensure the state guarantees associated with these rights. 72. Threats to national security in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health are posed by the emergence of epidemics and pandemics, the mass spread of diseases such as oncological, cardiovascular, endocrinological, and HIV infections, tuberculosis, drug addiction, and alcoholism, an increase in instances of trauma and poisoning, and availability of psychoactive and psychotropic substances for illegal consumption. 73. Factors that have a negative influence on national security in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health are shortcomings in implementing state policy in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health with regard to ensuring the availability of medical assistance and implementing guarantees that it will be given to the population, the imperfect nature of the current medical insurance system, inadequate funding for the system of high-tech medical assistance, the low standard of qualifications of medical personnel, and the not fully formed normative-legal base in the said sphere. 74. The aims of state policy in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health consist in preventing diseases, averting the growth of diseases that pose a danger to people nearby, increasing the availability of medical assistance to the population, improving the effectiveness and quality of medical services, reducing the level of disabilities, and developing and introducing new medical technologies and medicines. To implement state policy in this sphere it is necessary to shape a long-term strategy for the development of the citizens’ health protection system, to improve the organizational foundations of health care and its management, to specify the powers and responsibility of federal organs of state power, organs of state power of the Russian Federation components, and local self-government organs in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health, to determine the procedure for cooperation among health care management organs, and also to create national scientific-practical medical centers for the prevention and treatment of socially significant diseases. 75. For the purposes of countering threats in the sphere of protecting citizens’ health, organs of state power and local self-government organs, in cooperation with civil society institutions, ensure: UNCLASSIFIED