"Researchers who studied the effects of recession on rates of the highly infectious disease during the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s found a strong link between the two and said their findings suggest a similar pattern could emerge now", said Reuters.

Tuberculosis is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis in humans.  Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body. It is spread through the air, when people who have the disease cough, sneeze, or spit  . Most infections in humans result in an asymptomatic, latent infection, and about one in ten latent infections eventually progresses to active disease, which, if left untreated, kills more than 50% of its victims.

Their estimates were for 200 excess cases of tuberculosis per 100,000 people in the population in Latvia, 130 per 100,000 in Lithuania and 75 per 100,000 in Estonia compared with some 40 per 100,000 in Russia over the period of recession and recovery.

"Analysing 15 countries in central and eastern Europe, they found strong links between the lost economic productivity during recessions and excess numbers of TB cases and deaths, they wrote in the study in the Royal Society journal Interface."

Tuberculosis cases in Latvia this year: January - 40; February - 45; March - 86. Deaths by Tuberculosis in Latvia this year: January - 2; February - 6; March - no data so far. 

Latvian Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Clinic director Ludmila Viksna said that british scientist information is high-colored.  Incidences of tuberculosis in Latvia is not growing and does not show any symptoms of the disease in an increasing crackdown. She also stated that statistics now show directly opposite scene, and the total number of patients decreases. In 2008 Latvian Tuberculosis and Lung Disease Clinic official Vija Riekstina said that since 2006 the total number of tuberculosis patients has decreased. 

But could it be that scientists are wrong? And for the second time? In 2004 World Health Organization (WHO) published document which said that in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, 14 percent of tuberculosis patients were found form of tuberculosis that resist treatment, even with the strongest effects of drugs, and these countries are the 10 countries in the world among which the heavy infectious disease threat to the most. When WHO published it, Latvia had 59-53 cases. After the year 2004 the total number of tuberculosis patients decreased: In year 2006 - 49-46; 2008 - 40.3

"If TB epidemiology and control are linked to economies in 2009 as they were in 1991 then the Baltic states, particularly Latvia, are now vulnerable to another upturn in TB cases and deaths,'' was said on the this years report. "Put simply, there's a lot less money around for spending on public health," said Nimalan Arinaminpathy of Britain's Oxford University, who led the study." Tuberculosis is a serious disease and it should be treated as it.

                          (Tuberculosis cases in Latvia 1971-2008)

10 facts about tuberculosis:

1. Tuberculosis is contagious and spreads through the air. If not treated, each person with active TB can infect on average 10 to 15 people a year.
2. More than two billion people, equal to one third of the world’s total population, are infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB. One in every 10 of those people will become sick with active TB in his or her lifetime. People living with HIV are at a much greater risk.
3. A total of 1.77 million people died from TB in 2007 (including 456 000 people with HIV), equal to about 4800 deaths a day. TB is a disease of poverty, affecting mostly young adults in their most productive years. The vast majority of TB deaths are in the developing world, with more than half occurring in Asia.
4. TB is a leading killer among people living with HIV, who have weakened immune systems.
5. There were 9.27 million new TB cases in 2007, of which 80% were in just 22 countries. Per capita, the global TB incidence rate is falling, but the rate of decline is very slow - less than 1%.
6. TB is a worldwide pandemic. Among the 15 countries with the highest estimated TB incidence rates, 13 are in Africa, while half of all new cases are in six Asian countries (Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Philippines).
7. Multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) is a form of TB that does not respond to the standard treatments using first-line drugs. MDR-TB is present in virtually all countries surveyed by WHO and its partners.
8. There were an estimated 511 000 new MDR-TB cases in 2007 with three countries accounting for 56% of all cases globally: China, India and the Russian Federation. Extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB) occurs when resistance to second-line drugs develops. It is extremely difficult to treat and cases have been confirmed in more than 50 countries.
9. WHO’s Stop TB Strategy aims to reach all patients and achieve the target under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG): to reduce by 2015 the prevalence of and deaths due to TB by 50% relative to 1990 and reverse the trend in incidence. The strategy emphasizes the need for proper health systems and the importance of effective primary health care to address the TB epidemic.
10. The Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015, launched January 2006, aims to achieve the MDG target with an investment of US$ 67 billion. This represents more than a three-fold increase in investment from 2005. The estimated funding gap is US$ 40 billion.

More than two billion people – one third of the world’s total population – are infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB.  One in every 10 of those people will become sick with active TB in his or her lifetime. People living with HIV are at a much greater risk. Tuberculosis killed 1.8 million people in 2008, or nearly 5,000 people a day. More than 2 billion people are infected, but most TB infections are latent with carriers showing no symptoms.

Roughly a third of the world's population has been infected with M. tuberculosis, and new infections occur at a rate of one per second.   However, not all infections with M. tuberculosis cause TB disease and many infections are asymptomatic. In 2007, an estimated 13.7 million people had active TB disease, with 9.3 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths; the annual incidence rate varied from 363 per 100,000 in Africa to 32 per 100,000 in the America. Tuberculosis is the world's greatest infectious killer of women of reproductive age and the leading cause of death among people with HIV/AIDS (Stop TB Partnership. London tuberculosis rates now at Third World proportions. PR Newswire Europe Ltd. 4 December 2002. Retrieved on 3 October 2006.)

In developed countries, tuberculosis is less common and is mainly an urban disease. In the United Kingdom, the national average was 15 per 100,000 in 2007, and the highest incidence rates in Western Europe were 30 per 100,000 in Portugal and Spain. These rates compared with 98 per 100,000 in China and 48 per 100,000 in Brazil. In the United States, the overall tuberculosis case rate was 4 per 100,000 persons in 2007. (World Health Organization (2009) Global tuberculosis control: epidemiology, strategy, financing.) 

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. /Lev Tolstoy/

*Main picture: The Health Department maintained a Tuberculosis Clinic on the third floor of the old Public Safety Building (Yesler Building). The nurse in this photograph may be Elizabeth Winchell, R.N., who staffed the clinic in 1927