Nota:
guardate cosa hanno il coraggio di scrivere questi pseudoscienziati, "la
tubercolosi in Bielorussia viene dall'ansia".
L'unica vera forma di ansia che abbiamo scoperto, è quella di questi
parassiti della scienza al servizio della IAEA che cercano in tutti i modi
di negare l'effetto delle radiazioni sul sistema immunitario. Che vergogna!
Sir--In eastern Europe, including former USSR, rising tuberculosis (TB) rates have been reported.1 Malnutrition, poor living conditions, and inadequate supplies of anti-TB drugs may be to blame.2 Furthermore, especially in Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine, coinfection with HIV-1 has been considered to partially be attributed to this phenomenon.3
After the Chernobyl nuclear accident, a significant increase in the incidence of childhood thyroid diseases was found, particularly in Gomel region of Belarus, where thyroid cancer incidence is 100 times higher than that before the accident.4 TB infection rate was also increased in this area since the accident.
According to the WHO report (http://www.who.int/gtb/publications/globrep00/index.html; accessed June 23, 2000), the decline in the rate of TB infection began to reverse in Belarus after 1993. A total number of reported cases of TB in 1992 was 2414 (23·6 per 100 000 population), whereas in 1997, a total number was 5832 (56·4 per 100000). In particular, our data showed that TB rates in Gomel region have begun to reverse since 1991. The total number of TB cases in 1997 increased to 1227, as compared with 289 cases in 1986, when the accident occurred. Thus, the incidence increased more than four times in this region over 10 years.
Since the accident, diverse information on radiation, including rumours, has been disseminated in this area, which has resulted in anxiety about radiation safety (radiophobia) and its related health consequences. This public anxiety has led to the decline in the rate of TB screening, which was based on fluoroscopy. Thus, we strongly believe that, in addition to those factors mentioned above, radiophobia among the people in the contaminated areas may be partly responsible for the increased rate of TB.
Further analysis should be carried out to clarify the reason for this increase, together with the effective public education on radiation-related health effects.
*Noboru Takamura, Nikolay Kryshenko, Vladimir Masyakin, Hidehiko Tamashiro, Shunichi Yamashita
*Department
of Protection of the Human Environment, WHO, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland;
Department of International Health and Radiation Research, Atomic Bomb
Disease Institute, Nagasaki University School of Medicine, Nagasaki, Japan;
Health Care Department, Gomel, Belarus; Gomel Specialized Medical Dispensary,
Gomel, Belarus; and Department of Health for Senior Citizens, Graduate
School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Japan (e-mail:takamuran@who.ch)
2 Burns DN, Gellert GA, Crone RK. Tuberculosis in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: how concerned should we be? Lancet 1994; 343: 144546. [PubMed]
3 Dehne KL, Khodakevich L, Hamers FF, Schwartlander B. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in eastern Europe: recent patterns and trends and their implications for policy-making. AIDS 1999; 13: 74149. [PubMed]
4 Yamashita S, Shibata Y, eds. Chernobyl: a decade. Excerpta Medica ICS, 1156, Amsterdam, 1997: 1613.