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Russia's Other Biggest Problem: Tuberculosis
A virulent, drug resistant strain of tuberculosis is spreading fast in Russia and is already showing up in other parts of the world, prompting fears of a global epidemic in the coming decade.
By GSReport
Start Date: 2/25/99
While global attention is focused on the threatened disintegration of the Russian economy, another chilling danger haunts that huge and unhappy land. Many cases of a virulent, drug resistant new strain of tuberculosis are turning up, especially in the far east.
As reported by Kate Mallinson of the London bureau of Russia's news agency Interfax, "It is Russia's far-eastern penal colonies which will be condemned as the world's incubator of a virtually incurable and highly contagious strain" of tuberculosis. In Russia, Mallinson says, as many as 20,000 prison inmates have died of this new TB strain in the last two years alone, and as many as 100,000 are sick.
The disease is theoretically curable, but at a cost estimated at 100 times higher than for more traditional strains. In Russia, many who undergo treatment take the expensive drugs only until they feel better, then sell or barter the rest. The result: the disease soon resurges in an even stronger, drug-resistant form.
The disease won't be confined to Russia. With far more people traveling to and from that nation than ever before, including many poor people seeking better financial prospects elsewhere, the disease has already crossed the borders and headed for all points of the compass.
"There has long been a correlation between sickly economies and incidence of new endemic TB cases. The spread of the contagion... will be borne rapidly along by Russia's present collapse," Mallinson says. "Up to 200 million people worldwide could contract the disease by 2020. Some of the worst affected countries will be popular holiday and business destinations. They include regions of Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa," she predicts.
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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