The Department of Specialized Hygienic Disciplines, Epidemiology and General Hygiene was established in order to optimize the educational process by decision of the Academic Council of the FSBEI HE KubSMU in September 2023 by merging the Department of specialized hygienic disciplines and Epidemiology and the Department of Hygiene with Ecology.
The Department of Hygiene was established in 1920.
The first department of hygiene and Epidemiology in the history of the university (as it was called then) was headed by a well-known scientist, a well-educated man, one of the initiators of the formation of health authorities, including the sanitary service in Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory, Doctor of Medicine Apollon Andreevich Tsvetaev (1920-1924). It was he who, at the opening of Kuban State University on September 5, 1920, was given the right to deliver the first commencement address in the university’s history. Tsvetaev initiated the establishment of a sanitary and anti-epidemic service and health authorities in the city of Krasnodar and the Krasnodar Territory. Under his leadership, a team of the first employees of the department – assistants to sanitary doctors V.B. Zabaluev (1920-1923), A.I. Ammiantov (1920-1924), V.R. Yavorsky (1920-1931), and others, the educational process was established and the first scientific research was carried out. Professor A.A. Tsvetaev took an active part in the organization of the physico-medical society, in the creation of the first printed scientific medical publication, the Military Medical Journal, which in 1921 was renamed the Kuban Scientific and Medical Bulletin, and became the author of the first scientific articles of the department: “Cholera outbreak in the city of Novorossiysk in 1922 from the point of view of sanitary, technical and epidemiological”, “A school issue from the point of view of a hygienist”.
In 1924-1932, the department was headed by Professor Pavel Petrovich Avrorov. At the same time, he headed the Department of Pharmacology and was first deputy (1922-1925), then director (1925-1929) of the Kuban Medical Institute named after the Red Army. Experienced sanitary doctors M.L. Bensman (1924-1944), L.A. Lebedev (1926-1934), and bacteriologist S.F. Bubes were invited as assistants to the department. The first works on occupational hygiene were published: “The state of health and working conditions of polygraph workers in Krasnodar”, “Krasnodar printers, their health and working conditions”, “Gas state of the air during fermentation and processing of yellow leaf tobacco”.
In 1927, for the first time at the department, the course of school hygiene was taught by associate professor N. P. Markov (1927-1938), who published the first article in the history of the department on the hygiene of children and adolescents, “The experience of studying the sanitary environment of students in Krasnodar.
From 1934 to 1941, the department, which since 1937 was called the Department of General Hygiene, was headed by Mikhail Petrovich Bolotov, a graduate of our institute and head of the Sanitary and Hygienic Department of the Krasnodar Sanitary and Bacteriological Research Institute.
The staff of the department (M.L. Bensman, E.P. Tokareva, E.A. Serobabova, N.S. Kuzmin, and others) began to carry out ecological and hygienic research for the first time, and Professor M.P. Bolotov defended the first doctoral dissertation in the history of the department on the topic: “On the hygienic importance of lead and copper in nutrition and on the use of electrolysis to determine these metals in food products”, 1940
During the Great Patriotic War, the department was headed by Professor D.I. Kochan, and then Associate Professor Mikhail Lazarevich Bensman served as head of the department (1942-1944). During these war years, the staff of the department devoted all their efforts to accelerated training of medical personnel for the army and logistics medical institutions.
In the post-war years (1944-1950), the department was headed by the famous hygienist Professor Rafail Semenovich Altman, who did a lot to restore the educational, methodological, laboratory base and resume the research work of the department.
The staff of the Department of Hygiene achieved significant success, especially in research work, under the leadership of a major organizer and a well-known scientist, Professor Philip Kharitonovich Chehlaty (1950-1955), former head of the Research Institute of Occupational Hygiene and Occupational Diseases of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and Deputy Chief State Inspector of the People’s Commissariat of Health, who was also rector of the Medical Institute. Professor F.H. Chehlaty is the first professor of hygiene in Kuban, who began to study the problem of occupational hygiene in the developing oil industry in those years. Under his leadership, the first graduate students of the department began working, who later became famous scientists and organizers of science: Academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Mikhail Georgievich Shandala, Professors Stepan Khristoforovich Nikolov and Vadim Alexandrovich Nesterov. Professor F.H. Chehlaty was the first to draw attention to the focal endemicity of iodine in the North Caucasus, in particular, in the Adygea Autonomous Region of the Krasnodar Territory. Sofya Mikhailovna Pechenkina, an assistant professor at the department, collected factual material on this topical issue and defended her PhD thesis.
The next stage in the development of the department and the formation of a new scientific direction, the improvement of the laboratory base is closely connected with the arrival as head (1956-1964) of one of the organizers of the Scientific Research Institute of Nutrition of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and the organizer of the Department of Food Hygiene in ZOLYUV, Honored Scientist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Felix Stanislavovich Okolov. Laboratory and experimental biochemical research methods began to occupy a significant place. He developed methods for studying and evaluating the lifetime denaturation and thermosensitivity of various proteins exposed to internal and external environmental factors, which were used by his students (more than 100 papers were completed, including 18 dissertations, 4 of them doctoral), including associate professor S.H. Nikolov, and showed the possibility of using this method in hygiene practice and clinic. F.S. Okolov developed a new method for determining blood methemoglobin, proposed the first classification of food poisoning in the history of food hygiene based on the etiological and pathogenetic principle, the department resumed environmental research, and a textbook for students, “A course of lectures on military hygiene” (1960), was prepared and published.
For more than 26 years (1964-1991), the department was headed by a student of professors F.H. Chehlaty and F.S. Okolova is a graduate of our university, Stepan Khristoforovich Nikolov, who simultaneously worked as dean of the Faculty of Medicine for several years. For ten years (1965-1974), the department was the first and only one in the country to conduct a hygienic assessment of the biological value and harmlessness of food products obtained using new technologies using ultrasound and vibration. In 1982, the scientist was awarded the title of laureate of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Prize in Hygiene named after F.F. Erisman. In 1965, he founded the Krasnodar Regional Scientific Medical Society of Hygienists and Sanitary Doctors and led it for more than 26 years.
Since 1991, the department’s staff has been led by a graduate of the Kirov Military Medical Academy, a student of Professor S.H. Nikolov, MD, “Full Member (Academician) of the International Academy of Environmental Sciences and Life Safety”, “Honored Healthcare Worker of the Russian Federation”, Professor Peter Vladimirovich Nefedov. He is the author and co-author of more than 375 publications, including seven monographs and two textbooks for university students in the Russian Federation. He is a co-author of the development of four documents at the union and republican levels of implementation in the national economy, co-author and editor of 12 teaching manuals and workshops for students of medical, pediatric, preventive medicine, dental and pharmaceutical faculties. Professor P.V. Nefedov has worked for many years as a member of the All-Union Problem Commission “Occupational Hygiene of women in agricultural production”, the Republican Commission “Scientific foundations of rural Hygiene”, the Coordinating Educational and Methodological Council for Environmental Education and Education of students of medical and Pharmaceutical universities of the Russian Federation, in the expert Councils of the State Scientific and Technical Program “Health of the Russian Population” and the Regional Committee on nature conservation, in the dissertation council at Rostov Medical University.
Professor P.V. Nefedov is a doctoral dissertation consultant, scientific supervisor of 4 PhD theses. In recent years, the scientific interests of the department have been focused on the problem of hygiene of children and adolescents.
The Department of Specialized Hygienic Disciplines and Epidemiology of Kuban State Medical University was established in 2001 on the basis of Order No. 296-l dated 30.06.2001. as a specialized and graduate department of the Faculty of Medicine and Prevention. The department teaches students of the IV, V and VI courses in the following disciplines: occupational hygiene, food hygiene, communal hygiene, hygiene of children and adolescents, radiation hygiene, epidemiology. A certification cycle on general hygiene is conducted annually for specialists of the region.
The first head of the department was Galina Leshcheva, MD, Professor, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, Honorary Worker of the Sanitary and Epidemiological Service of the Russian Federation, Doctor of the highest category (2001-2015).
Olga Vasilyevna, PhD, Associate Professor of Hygiene and Ecology, was the head of the department from 2007 to 2014.