On the shelter establishment for premature infants in Saint-Petersburg

The article is devoted to the establishment of the first special accessible shelter for premature infants in the Russian Empire. Nowadays new medical centers of extracorporal fertilization, perinatal surveillance and obstetric aid are opened annually in order to preserve population and improve demographic indicators. Therefore, the history of such institutions seems to be the subject of current interest. The shelter for premature infants in Saint-Petersburg was founded in 1901 and expanded the institutional structure of the City Executive Sanitary Commission at the Saint-Petersburg City Council - the organ of the municipal government. The article examines the process of the new institution organization and investigates the first results of its functioning. By the end of the XIXth century a whole network of maternity shelters in different parts of Saint-Petersburg was already under the authority of the City Executive Sanitary Commission. The accumulated knowledge and the obtained experience in the work with prematurely- born children resulted in the establishment of the separate shelter for premature infants. The appearance of this institution spoke of the extension of municipal government’s activity in area of public health care. The study involves previously unpublished documents of the Saint-Petersburg Central State Historical Archive.