ABANDON ALL HOPE?: The entrance to a jailhouse in the Russian city of Tomsk. Many inmates suffer from tuberculosis (TB) infections. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

PRISONER’S PERSPECTIVE: Some prisoners have multidrug resistant (MDR) TB which often requires an injectable antibiotic to treat. To get their daily shots, prisoners must stick their arms through the bars. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

PASSING THE TIME: Many patient–inmates spend their days watching television. They jumped to their feet when the prison doctor stuck his head in the door. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

HANGING ON: A man isolated from other inmates in the MDR-TB wing at the Tomsk prison hospital system. Treatment for this difficult-to-eradicate form of TB can take up to two years. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

SUITED UP:

Doctors take special precautions when treating patients in the MDR wards. MDR-TB is not more contagious that regular, so-called susceptible TB, but caregivers especially wish to avoid contracting a contagious disease that may take two years to fight off with drugs....[More]

SUITED UP:

Doctors take special precautions when treating patients in the MDR wards. MDR-TB is not more contagious that regular, so-called susceptible TB, but caregivers especially wish to avoid contracting a contagious disease that may take two years to fight off with drugs.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

POWER OF PRAYER?: The icon-filled Orthodox Christian chapel in the Tomsk prison hospital. Perhaps convicts with TB come here to pray for recovery from the disease. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

READY TO WORK AGAIN: The prison bakery where some tubercular patients that are on the mend come to work. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American

SANATORIUM: It's afternoon in a prison TB ward. After treatment is completed, inmates will return to the assigned prison units. [Link to this slide]
Merrill Goozner/© Scientific American