Prague, July 28 (CTK) – Czech doctors propose that refugees from risky countries should be X-rayed for tuberculosis since older children stopped to be re-vaccinated against the disease in the country in 2009 and the mandatory vaccination on newly born babies was quit in 2010, Mlada fronta Dens (MfD) writes Tuesday.
“This has not yet been reflected in statistics, but my colleagues among doctors speak about an increasing number of the infected,” MfD quotes doctor Rolando Arias as saying.
“I have heard from doctors that more people have been infected among ordinary families, that is those where tuberculosis was not previously common,” Arias said.
The disease has been considered one afflicting the homeless, purely nourished nations and people with weakened immunity, such as seniors in hospitals, MfD writes.
Martina Vasakova, senior consultant of the Pneumology Clinic of Thomayer Hospital in Prague, told MfD that tuberculosis is spoken about as a “sleeping threat.”
“It shows that tuberculosis attacks patients whose immunity has been weakened by the treatment of another disease, such as multiple sclerosis,” she said.
That is one of the reasons why the disease now also appears among “people living a good life,” not only among the homeless like before, Vasakova said.
MfD writes that the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently wrote about hundreds of people with an untreated TB among refugees.
Britain, too, is dealing with a similar problem, MfD writes.
“Great Britain is now solving a big problem with tuberculosis brought to the country from outside. Our specialist medical society wants to avoid this, that is why we have proposed measures to protect the Czech Republic in connection with the immigrants,” Stanislav Kos, a member of the Czech Pneumological and Phthisiological Society, told MfD.
Doctors from the society propose that refugees from countries with a high incidence of TB, such as Ukraine, should be X-rayed and undergo a tuberculosis skin test. Those with a confirmed infection would be sent to a hospital instead of a refugee camp, Kos said.
MfD writes that German doctors warn against that antibiotics are increasingly resistant to TB and that new vaccines have not been developed for more than 60 years.
The treatment of tuberculosis is long and costly. A total of 5363 infected people were treated in the Czech Republic last year. The costs involved exceeded 450 million crowns, MfD writes.
