Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://blogs.channel4.com/victoria-...ng-spectre-of-tuberculosis-across-russia/1319
Tuesday 30 Jul 2013
The rising spectre of tuberculosis across Russia
...In recent years, the rates of the most common form of tuberculosis have started to come down.
But to the alarm of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international bodies, the rates of multi-drug resistance (MDR) and extremely drug resistance (XDR) are climbing. They are now the highest in Europe and the third highest in the world.
It is a result of patients not completing their course of drugs.
But the pattern is now changing. The WHO now estimates that 20 per cent of new TB cases in Russia are MDR. That is, they are contracting the disease without having been treated before. And it is emerging in increasing numbers amongst children.
Yet in the midst of this desperate situation ? the Russian government has taken a decision that has astounded international observers.
With little notice, it has banished one of the biggest funders of TB programmes ? USAID ? because it is American, and it is now refusing help from the Global Fund for Aids/TB and malaria...
Tuesday 30 Jul 2013
The rising spectre of tuberculosis across Russia
...In recent years, the rates of the most common form of tuberculosis have started to come down.
But to the alarm of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international bodies, the rates of multi-drug resistance (MDR) and extremely drug resistance (XDR) are climbing. They are now the highest in Europe and the third highest in the world.
It is a result of patients not completing their course of drugs.
But the pattern is now changing. The WHO now estimates that 20 per cent of new TB cases in Russia are MDR. That is, they are contracting the disease without having been treated before. And it is emerging in increasing numbers amongst children.
Yet in the midst of this desperate situation ? the Russian government has taken a decision that has astounded international observers.
With little notice, it has banished one of the biggest funders of TB programmes ? USAID ? because it is American, and it is now refusing help from the Global Fund for Aids/TB and malaria...