Who Needs Prognosis for the Risk of Tick-Borne Encephalitis Infection?

Mikhail P. MOSHKIN, Valentina N. BAKHVALOVA, Evgeny A. NOVIKOV 

In June 2007, the Chief Sanitary Officer of the Russian Federation G. Onishchenko warned about the beginning of the most severe tick-borne encephalitis epidemic in this country over the last 5 years. In addition to the “traditionally” dangerous regions, Siberia and the Far East, over 40 regions were added to the list of potentially risky territories. The situation was complicated by the fact that the majority of local authorities did not take care beforehand to create the necessary resources of immunoglobulin, virtually the only specific drug against this actually fatal disease.

When reading news about a growth in the number of tick-bitten and infected people, one has a feeling that it refers to a sudden and devastating natural disaster, more unanticipated than a hurricane (as meteorologists usually alert on it in time) but rather like a tsunami caused by an unexpected earthquake in unimaginable ocean depths… However, the agent and vector of infectious brain inflammation that got the name tick-borne encephalitis was discovered by the Far-East expedition of the USSR Narkomzdrav (People’s Commissariat of Public Health) headed by L.A. Zilber*, an outstanding virologist, as long ago as in the 1930s!

Why on earth an outbreak of spring — summer encephalitis 70 years later is regarded as an insidious and unpredictable natural phenomenon?

Content

More information on these and other subjects you can find in the printed version of our journal.