Russia Has Few Weapons as Infectious Diseases Surge

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2000. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Russia Has Few Weapons as Infectious Diseases Surge

New York Times (www.nytimes.com) (12/05/00) P. D1
Zuger, Abigail

Tuberculosis (TB) has become epidemic in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, and doctors are often forced to use outdated medical techniques due to a lack of resources. For example, one commonly used method of fighting drug-resistant TB in the country, using air injections to compress infected lungs, which gives them an opportunity to heal, has not been used in the West for many years. Some experts have called Russia's TB situation the largest outbreak of drug-resistant TB in the world, with a prison system that is considered an "epidemiologic pump" that continuously supplies pockets of disease. However in addition to TB, Russia is faced with soaring rates of other infections--including hepatitis, syphilis, and AIDS--and there are frequent reports of regional outbreaks of diseases like encephalitis, typhoid, malaria, polio, pneumonia, and the flu. While once-rampant TB rates in Russia were brought under control before the fall of the Soviet Union, the government's extremely limited resources cannot cope with the new surge of infections fueled by growing poverty, stress, overcrowding, and alcoholism. Martin McKee, an expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, notes that while "the total cost of infectious diseases in Russia is not that great, ... the important thing is that it is going up and up." The cost will likely increase even further as the AIDS epidemic spreads. The majority of HIV cases in Russia are among injection drug users, with infection rates among addicts in some areas reaching 30 percent. Officials are concerned that HIV will soon spread even further among the sexual partners of these individuals.
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