KOTIB (Commission for the Improvement of Living Conditions)

KOTIB (Commission for the Improvement of Living Conditions), organs of workers' self-activity attached to medical and preventive institutions, having the goal of involving the working population in the improvement of healthcare organization and the elimination of shortcomings. KOTIBs are organized at central outpatient clinics (outpatient associations), at dispensaries (unified, venereological, tuberculosis), at mother and child welfare consultations, at children's professional outpatient clinics, and at malaria stations. In rural medical and preventive institutions, the functions of KOTIBs lie with the health commissions (sections) of the district executive committees and village councils. The composition of KOTIBs includes representatives of the city council's health section, factory committees (labor protection commissions), enterprises and institutions, local committees of the latter, the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, insurance funds, worker-correspondents of large enterprises, and sanitary physicians. A KOTIB participates in the development and discussion of the plans of the corresponding medical-sanitary institutions, monitors the implementation of dispensary examination plans, participates in surveys of working and living conditions, manages the provision of social assistance to the sick, assists in conducting sanitary-educational work, participates in healthcare campaigns (tuberculosis three-day drives, mother and child protection weeks, etc.), and in the review of patient complaints regarding disorder in the corresponding medical institutions. The KOTIB is one of the most characteristic features of the Soviet healthcare system, which is built, unlike any other system (pre-revolutionary in Russia—Zemstvo, etc., or capitalist), on the self-activity of the working people.