It has become a tradition to give closer attention to a problem which is fixed in a calendar date when the date draws nearer. So it was shortly before the World Day of Combating Tuberculosis. The Health Ministry, jointly with the Ukrainian Red Cross and the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy staged a press conference where they announced that by WHO criteria, the TB situation in Ukraine could be ascertained as an epidemic. It was no accident that the social ministry found itself in the company of the two medical organizations. Ukraine hopes to stop TB by eradicating poverty. However, in spite of a mountain of documents adopted recently and supposed to help solve the problem — the poverty fighting strategy, pension reform, reform concept of labor remuneration, and others — a quarter of Ukrainians are officially below the poverty line and 80% consider themselves poor. Doctors say that TB is only a 10% medical problem, the rest depends on living standards. This can be judged by the figures: the number of Koch bacillus carriers has doubled in the past ten years, and the number of lethal cases has grown 2.7 times. At present, 670,000 tuberculosis-infected Ukrainians are under supervision, 120,000 of them are cases in active form.
According to Yury Feshenko, Director of the Institute of Parasitic and Pulmonary Diseases of the Academy of Medical Sciences, one of the basic problems related to tuberculosis is protection of rights of the healthy. Treatment for tuberculosis is not compulsory in this country, so one can become infected very easily when staying in the same room or bus with an infected person. There are certain reasons why people don’t want to be treated for TB. Some count on their active form certificate as entitling them to housing privileges or free recreation in a specialized sanitarium. The latter, however, cannot be called satisfactory — the available TB sanitariums have very poor amenities and services. Successful treatment depends partially on sufficient nutrition saturated with animal proteins, but meals are the inmates’ own problem — they do the cooking for themselves on electric stovese in their rooms. Sometimes, a sanitarium has only two electric lights. Meanwhile, reporters were told at the press conference that the funding of the tuberculosis program “is being increased daily” and “if things go at this rate, in five or seven years Ukraine will in fact cope with the problem”.
The government has approved regional TB programs, regional interdepartmental commissions have stepped up their activity, medical institutions are cooperating more closely with the State Department for Penitentiaries. According to Oleksandr Hunchenko, Chief of the Department for Medical Maintenance and Sanitary- Epidemiological Control of Penitentiaries, the number of tuberculosis cases in Ukrainian prisons has decreased. Instead, another problem has emerged, HIV/AIDS, which has partially compensated for the decrease in the number of Koch bacillus carriers.
