MOSCOW, Nov 26 (AFP) - Russia is facing a resurgence of diseases that were long-since contained in developed countries because of a deterioration in health care and general poverty.

Recently the alarm was raised in the Samara region of central Russia where a 50-year-old died and 177 people were infected by a virus that causes fatal internal bleeding.

The GLPE virus, which causes internal haemorrhages and also affects the kidneys, is transmitted by mice. The virus is not rare and in Russia claims its toll every year, said Galina Fyodorova Lazinova, one of the heads of Russia's epidemiology studies.

But doctors in the Samara region were not so calm, saying on NTV television that they feared there would be more victims if they were not given a recently-developed vaccine.

The vaccine, although effective, must still be tested in the laboratory, but it would cost the health ministry 20 million dollars to do that, which it can hardly afford.

Lazinova said that in the meantime, Samara health services had found a way of fighting the disease -- by killing off the mice. In the meantime, close to 180 people are waiting in the area, suffering from flu-like symptoms, aches and pains and debility.

If they are not treated, victims die from internal bleeding after the virus has attacked their blood vessels.

NTV television presented GLPE as one of those mysterious diseases that frequently strike Russia. In July, the people of three southern regions -- Rostov, Stavropol and Volgograd - were panicked after a mystery virus killed 10 people and caused the hospitalisation of 174 others.

To blame was the Congo-Crimea virus, spread by ticks and which causes high fever and haemorrhages. In August, 80 people were taken to hospital with similar symptoms in Bashkirya, in the Urals.

A total of 140 caught an "unknown virus" in June, near Tula, south of Moscow, while another 200 were laid low in Tatarstan at the end of August.

Most of the time confusion about the causes and detail of the mass illness can be explained by poor diagnoses, with provincial doctors lacking the means to carry out serious analyses.

Lack of cash is also a reason for shortages of medicines across Russia. Those which are available are often extremely expensive and out of reach for the ordinary Russian, whose wage is less than 65 dollars.

According to official figures, a third of the population of 147 million survives on less than a dollar a day.

These economic problems have encouraged the re-emergence of old diseases, such as tuberculosis, plague and even cholera, which, admitted Russian Deputy Minister for Health Gennady Onishchenko, were a glaring demonstration of poverty.

Aware of the problems that were exacerbated by the economic crisis last August, the ministry has placed the fight against tuberculosis, AIDS and sexually transmissible diseases at the top of its agenda.

The ministry has also moved to contain the plague in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea areas.

Russia has more than 100,000 prisoners infected with TB and officially 20,000 HIV-positive inmates, of whom 9,500 were contaminated this year.

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