Gennady Onishchenko

Gennadiy Grigoryevich Onishchenko (Russian: Геннадий Григорьевич Онищенко, born 20 November 1950) is a Russian government official who was the Chief Sanitary Inspector of Russia from 1996 to 2013. He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.

Gennady Onishchenko was born on 20 November 1950 in Changyr-Tash village, modern Kyrgyzstan. In 1973 he graduated from the M. Gorky Donetsk State Medical Institute. He is a Candidate Master of Sports in weightlifting.

From 1973 to 1987 he worked in the Ministry of Railways of the USSR as a doctor-epidemiologist. In 1982 he became the chief sanitary doctor of the Moscow metro, in 1983 — the head of the central sanitary and epidemiological station of the Ministry of Railways. In 1988 he was appointed Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Quarantine Infections of the USSR Ministry of Health. Onishchenko participated in the liquidation of the Chernobyl disaster.

In the fall of 1995, during the First Chechen War, Onishchenko was kidnapped on the way from Mozdok to Grozny, and was held captive by Chechen separatists.

From 1993 to 2002 he was a member of the Constructive-Ecological Movement of Russia "Kedr", transformed into the Russian Ecological Party "The Greens" in 2002.

On June 24, 2009, Eduard Kokoity granted Onishchenko honorary citizenship of South Ossetia.

From 1996 to 2013 Onishchenko was the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of Russia and ex officio First Deputy Minister of Health. Since 2004 he was the head of newly established Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection (Rospotrebnadzor).

During Onishchenko's 17-year-long tenure his department made numerous radical and controversial actions: