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CNN Saturday Morning News

Russian Town Offers to Pay Doctors in Dung

Aired June 02, 2001 - 09:56   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The cash-strapped governments of Russian often can't pay much of anything to anyone, and that includes doctors, with cash. Sometimes they offer acceptable goods instead. But one doctor has turned his nose up, quite literally, at the latest offer.

CNN's Steve Harrigan sniffed out the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEVE HARRIGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A surgeon with 18 years' experience in the Russian town of Vacha gets paid about $40 a month, in theory. One month, the cash-poor local government paid Dr. Yury Zotov in timber. One month he got sugar. Before that, bread, a bicycle, a washing machine.

But this month, he says, they've gone too far.

DR. YURY ZOTOV, SURGEON (through translator): The chief doctor announced, if anyone wanted their salary, they could receive it manure. People were shocked.

HARRIGAN: The mayor says the refuse was a deal he couldn't refuse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It's high-quality cow manure from a farm that could not pay the city for fuel. We offered the doctors a good price, about $12 a ton, including delivery.

HARRIGAN: The bargain dung was duly delivered to Vacha dachas, where the city's physicians grow their own vegetables to survive, until Dr. Zotov alerted the local media.

ZOTOV: I couldn't stand it any more. This was a cry from the heart.

HARRIGAN: The whiff or stink of scandal made it to Moscow. And now, for the first time in years, a hospital with no hot water and few light bulbs is paying its staff in cash.

Steve Harrigan, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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