Adoption in the Russian Federation and Eastern Europe: health problems and medical recommendations

The Russian Federation and the Eastern Europe countries are the first geographic area in frequency of the children adopted abroad by Spanish families. Respect to these countries, the aims of this article are to describe: a) the sociopolitical context that has increased the incidence of health problems in the general population, and of the institutionalized children because they being left orphan, being abandoned or to suffer abuses; b) the main health problems of the adopted and in process of being adopted children, on the base of the international literature review of the last 10 years and on the retrospective study of a national casuistry assessed during five years (2000-2004); c) the characteristics and the deficiencies of the carried out pre-adoptive medical records; d) the medical advising for the families in process to adopt; e) the medical recommendations for the initial assessment and monitoring of the adopted children.