26 March 2004 13:03
TB death rate in Russian city said to be double the national average
Death rate due to tuberculosis in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is said to be twice the Russian national average, Russian NTV
Mir has said.
Reporting on TB cases in the city, the TV said hospitals were overcrowded and added that "the death rate due to
this illness in the region is almost double the average indicator for Russia as a whole, with 150 TB deaths in
Krasnoyarsk alone last year".
More than half of new patients are hospitalized with the illness already at an advanced stage and most of them are
from poor families. The infection rate among men is more than double that of women and the TB strain is apt to mutate
and become resistant to medicines.
Galloping consumption, which used to claim the lives of thousands, "has returned", the TV said, showing
gaunt-looking patients in hospital. Mobile laboratories have appeared in the city, carrying out up to 300 X-rays a day.
One TB patient can, statistically, infect between 25 and 100 people a year, the TV said.
The efforts to combat what the TV called an epidemic has already yielded the first results: "medical personnel
have succeeded in cutting the infant infection rate by a third", the TV said.
[NTV Mir] |
RUSSIA IN FACTS
