The 2022 Russian Federation State Award for outstanding achievements in human rights activity has been given to Olga DEMICHEVA.
Olga Demicheva was born in Moscow on May 16, 1958. In 1982, she graduated from the Semashko Moscow Medical Dental Institute. President of the International charity public organisation Doctor Liza's Fair Care. Member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights. Member of the Russian Association of Palliative Medicine.
Olga Demicheva is a well-known endocrinologist with many years of experience. She has been a member of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes since 2009. She has actively defended the rights of patients with diabetes.
For over 30 years she has worked at the Moscow Municipal Clinical Hospital No. 11. She spearheaded a public movement for creating Russia’s first Centre for Palliative Medicine on the basis of that hospital. The centre was established in 2015 and has now become a leading medical palliative care institution.
Since 2018, Olga Demicheva has been on the board of the Doctor Liza's Fair Care Foundation. In 2020, she was asked to head this organisation. According to the human rights community, her informal and cordial approach to each patient combined with an uncompromising civic position and professionalism helped her continue the cause of the first winner of the State Award for outstanding achievements in human rights activity Yelizaveta Glinka.
Olga Demicheva has stepped up the foundation’s work in the following areas: treatment of seriously ill and wounded children from the combat zone in Donbass; providing food and first aid to homeless people (Railway Station on Wednesdays and Dinner on Fridays programmes); caring for terminally and seriously ill patients and providing them with medicines (Lend a Helping Hand programme).
In 2021, with the support from the Presidential Grants Foundation, Olga Demicheva launched the special project Live! War and Death in Spite of to provide seriously ill children living in the DPR and LPR with the necessary medicines.
Olga Demicheva has travelled many times to the DPR and LPR. She has seen over 600 patients to determine treatment strategies and to prepare them for referral to federal medical centres in Russia.
Her overall experience in this area was used as the basis for drafting a report which was submitted to the President at a meeting of the Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in 2022. Based on the report, an instruction was issued to provide the new territories with additional medicines and medical products.
Under her leadership, the Green Light Outreach Centre for Homeless People opened in Moscow where they could get psychological counselling, narcological, legal and specialised assistance, as well as advice on recovering documents and employment.
As part of the HRC, she has put together materials on improving the provision of medical and social security services for homeless people which were used to draft the corresponding Presidential instructions.
Olga Demicheva leads the initiative to create a medical and social centre for homeless people in Moscow as a pilot programme to resolve this problem on a national scale.