Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis in Russia

Veteran journalist Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, discusses his series of articles for SciAm.com on the rise of tuberculosis in Russia. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news. Web sites mentioned in this episode include www.gooznews.com; www.snipurl.com/goozner

The methods for fighting the multidrug resistant TB epidemic in Russia

The plight of inmates with TB in Russia's Tomsk Province

Can the campaign against MDR-TB in Russia help curb the global epidemic?

The collapse of the Soviet health care system in the 1990s coupled with prisons releasing improperly treated inmates and endemic poverty escalated incidences of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis to epidemic proportions

Tuberculosis remains a stubborn foe despite the efforts of the public and private sector's efforts to deploy new antibiotics and diagnostic tools against a disease that thrives on poverty and ignorance

A Russian province bucks the national government, bringing tuberculosis treatment to the treated--and following through until they are cured. The results so far have been encouraging

Why loans to post-Soviet countries might have health consequences here

Resistance to ciprofloxacin has emerged in people without access to the antibiotic, but who have taken a related antimalarial

Some bacteria are more than resistant to various antibiotics--they can actually survive eating nothing BUT antibiotics. Karen Hopkin reports

Nearly 100,000 people die every year from bugs that they pick up in health care facilities; experts say most of these infections are preventable

New method prevents the transfer of antibiotic resistance (killing the stronger bacteria in the process)

Higher ceilings and bigger windows might be simple fixes for fighting tuberculosis in hospitals strapped for cash