vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #167 / Social life / Reading article...

The number of teenagers with tuberculosis has doubled in Primorye in the last year, and the disease is increasing rapidly throughout the krai, said Raisa Yefimenko, chief physician of Nakhodka’s tuberculosis clinic.

A recent report by the World Health Organization noted that TB is spreading across the whole of Russia with considerable speed. In Primorye, the situation is particularly bad with incidence of the disease almost a third higher than the national average. Some 96 out of 100,000 people in Primorye are infected with TB, compared with 68 of every 100,000 nationwide.

The report estimates that there are three million new TB victims in Russia, 25,000 of whom will die this year.

The demographics of the disease have also changed dramatically in recent years, physicians say, with high rates among students, in addition to the usual risk groups such as the unemployed and low-income families. It is now estimated that 50 percent of TB patients are people aged 20 to 39.

Many experts attribute the resurgence of TB in Russia to the social and economic instability of the past decade. Falling nutrional standards have left many people suffering from protein deficiency and weakened immune systems.

Here in Primorye, combating the disease has become problematic, with cuts in funding to hospitals and public health services.

“It will soon be half a year since the staff of the Vladivostok City Tuberculosis Hospital was paid,” Doctor Karachayeva, deputy chief physician at the hospital, said in a recent interview with Zavtra Rossii newspaper.

“Our staff consists mostly of women, many of them are raising children alone. The first question the employees ask when they come to work is, ‘What’s the word about money?’”

Operating funds havn’t come through since last June, and exactly where the funding should come from is disputed as well.

“The city authorities say we should be funded from the krai budget. The krai has in turn pointed at the city, saying the governor’s decree of February 11 this year says the hospital is covered by the municipal budget and should get funding from there,” says Karachayeva.

Insufficient funding at the TB Hospital has also led to a decline in sanitary standards, putting the hospital staff at risk themselves. Some staff members have developed the disease in the course of treating patients.