The Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation has postponed consideration of the issue of transition to the new International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) until 2025, Kommersant reports . Most of all, the Russian authorities do not like the changes in it, which affected the definitions of transsexuality and pedophilia.
The tenth version of the classification was adopted by the World Health Organization in 1990. Work on the eleventh version began in 2000. It was approved in 2019. If in the previous edition there were 14 thousand disease codes, then in the new one there are 55 thousand of them.
The new Sexual Health Conditions section includes transsexuality and hermaphroditism under the gender mismatch subsections. They are no longer classified as sexual disorders. At the same time, the wording "sexual craving for children", referring to pedophilia, was changed to "pedophilic disorder".
The transition to ICD-11 in Russia is carried out by order of the government from January 1, 2022. The classification does not suit the Russian Orthodox Church and the Communist Party in particular. The chairman of the patriarchal commission on family matters, protection of motherhood and childhood, Priest Fyodor Lukyanov, in his speech in the State Duma, argued that in the ICD-11 pedophilia "is considered as a deviation only if the pedophile feels discomfort from it", which is not in the classification. Irina Filatova from the Communist Party proposed a moratorium on the new classification.
In the ICD, each group of diseases has its own code. With their help, doctors from different countries understand what is at stake. In addition, classification is used as a tool for collecting statistics. With its help, the state determines the budget expenditures for the treatment of certain disorders and exchanges information with other countries.