Three doctors in Russia fall from hospital windows, sparking discussion amid coronavirus pandemic

Three frontline health care workers have mysteriously fallen out of hospital windows in Russia over the past two weeks -- prompting intense discussion on the working conditions for doctors and medical professionals amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Two of these health care workers are dead.

Alexander Shulepov, an ambulance doctor in Voronezh, is in a critical condition after falling from a hospital window on Saturday. Local state television said he fell out of second-floor window of the Novousmanskaya hospital, where he worked and was receiving treatment after testing positive for coronavirus.

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Shulepov was hospitalised on April 22, the same day he and his colleague Alexander Kosyakin posted a video online saying he had been forced to continue working even after testing positive for coronavirus.

The Novousmanskaya hospital, however, said in a statement that Shulepov had been taken off a shift as soon as he informed the hospital administration and was offered hospitalisation in the infectious diseases ward.

Three days later, Shulepov retracted his previous statements.

On May 1, Elena Nepomnyashchaya, the acting head doctor of a hospital in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, allegedly fell out of a window during a meeting with regional health officials and died.

Nepomnyashchaya was reported to have opposed changes to a medical facility due to the lack of protective gear in the hospital. The health ministry's regional health department, however, denied the allegations.

On April 24, Natalya Lebedeva, head of the emergency medical service at Star City, the main training base for Russia's cosmonauts, died in a hospital after a fall.