Drug-resistant tuberculosis rife in Estonia and St. Petersburg area

In Finland a couple of people contract TB every year

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The occurrence of drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis is on the increase in Eastern Europe. Health officials in Finland are particularly concerned because the multi-drug resistant form of tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has already found its way to Estonia and St. Petersburg.
      "Between two and five new cases of MDR-TB, which is resistant to the two most effective first line TB drugs Rifampicin and Isoniazid, are found in Finland per year", explains senior physician, professor Ville Valtonen from the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa.
      The disease is most commonly contracted in the St. Petersburg area or in the Baltic States.
      The number of new cases has stayed the same since 1995.
     
"Fortunately this figure is low", states Sirpa Pajunen, doctor of infectious diseases at the National Public Health Institute. She nevertheless fears that the number of the MDR-TB cases found in Finland may well start to rise.
      An even more dangerous TB strain, the so-called extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), also threatens to spread to Europe, but at least so far it has not been diagnosed in Finland. XDR-TB is not only resistant to Rifampicin and Isoniazid, but also to three or more of the six classes of second-line drugs.
      There are occurrences of the dreaded disease in the former Soviet Union area and further east in Asia.
     
In all, 358 cases of different forms of TB were confirmed in Finland last year. This number is diminishing year by year.
      "In the 1930s TB was a common disease. Some 30,000 infections were diagnosed per year", Valtonen explains.
      "The largest risk group are the over 70-year-olds, who were exposed to the bacteria in their childhood. Tuberculosis can remain dormant for several decades, coming out only when the immune system gets weaker in old age", says Valtonen.
     
Typhoid fever is another common infectious disease in the neighbouring areas. In the St. Petersburg district there is currently an epidemic, in which at least 67 national servicemen have contracted the disease.
      In Finland the illness is altogether rare, with only around five diagnosed cases per year.
      "All the discovered cases are likely to have been contracted abroad. In many developing countries typhoid fever is quite common", Pajunen says.
      At the Meilahti Hospital in Helsinki two typhus cases have been treated this year.
      During the Soviet era, travel within Russia was restricted, and the country's health care system was able to keep most infectious diseases more or less under control. The collapse of the old regime has seen a parallel resurgence of these diseases, along with others such as rubella ("German measles") and diphtheria.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Doctors cannot pinpoint origin of tuberculosis case in Uusimaa (23.1.2004)

Links:
  Wikipedia – Tuberculosis

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