01 November 2005, 20:36 Society

Shoigu - Lord of Microbes

Lyubov Kovaleva (Nizhny Novgorod) After an outbreak of hepatitis in Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations will develop a plan in case a similar situation repeats in any other Russian region. According to rescuers, local authorities will never be able to cope with the disease on their own.

On Tuesday, the head of the Volga-Ural regional center of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, Lieutenant General Pyotr Tretyakov, on instructions from the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu , held a closed meeting dedicated to eliminating the hepatitis A outbreak in Nizhny Novgorod. As announced, the heads of the health departments of Nizhny Novgorod and the region, Rospotrebnadzor , as well as the management of the municipal enterprise Nizhny Novgorod Vodokanal made presentations on the fight against mass disease.

Following the meeting, the general said that the local authorities had indeed done a lot of work to localize the hepatitis A outbreak. For example, to date, more than 70 thousand residents of Nizhny Novgorod have been vaccinated, more than 40 thousand of them at the expense of budget funds. More than 9.5 thousand people were vaccinated with immunoglobulin preparations.

Statistics show that since the beginning of September, 2,385 people have been hospitalized, including 528 children. More than 1,800 people have now been discharged from hospitals. 576 Nizhny Novgorod residents remain under treatment. About 35–40 newly ill hepatitis A patients are still admitted to hospitals per day. However, according to Tretyakov, the fact that the number of people discharged from hospitals is much higher than the number of new patients is already a good sign.

However, the representative of the ministry said that it will be possible to talk about the final elimination of the hepatitis A outbreak in Nizhny Novgorod no earlier than in a month or a month and a half.

As a representative of the Ministry of Emergency Situations noted, the reason may lie in the fact that Nizhny Novgorod sanitary epidemiologists have forgotten about health education - and many residents of Nizhny Novgorod still do not know anything about basic measures to prevent hepatitis A. “Today, only 18–20% of Nizhny Novgorod residents carry out the full scope of preventive measures.” events,” Tretyakov said. In this regard, the general asked media representatives not to refuse sanitary workers if they suddenly ask for some airtime to educate citizens.

Speaking about the investigation into the causes of the outbreak of the disease, Tretyakov said that the main version is still an accident in the water supply networks of the Nizhny Novgorod Vodokanal. Meanwhile, the final outcome of the investigation into the criminal case into the outbreak of the disease will be made public by the prosecutor's office of the Nizhny Novgorod region on the twentieth of November (however, it is possible that the investigation period will be extended again by a month).

After being asked why today’s meeting was held behind closed doors, Tretyakov became a little confused. And then he said that this was his first event in Nizhny Novgorod on the issue of eliminating the hepatitis A outbreak and “some numbers are closed.” However, as Gazeta.Ru managed to find out, the matter was different.

As it turned out, at the meeting, the Nizhny Novgorod authorities admitted that no matter how hard they tried, they could not and cannot quickly cope with the disease that had engulfed the city.

As a source in the Ministry of Emergency Situations told Gazeta.Ru, at the meeting “no loud statements were made”: the leaders simply talked about the problems they had to face. Officials complained that it is extremely difficult for regions to independently solve problems of this scale without financial assistance from the federal center. This is exactly what Tretyakov should report to Sergei Shoigu at the end of this week. And, as expected, in the near future, using the example of the hepatitis A outbreak in Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations will develop its own action plan in case a similar situation repeats in any other Russian region: rescuers have finally become convinced that local authorities will never cope with mass diseases on their own.