ICRC PRESS RELEASE

Support A1+!

Every year, 2 million people die of tuberculosis (TB), and 8 million people develop the disease in the world*. Due to the hard social and economic situation, together with the break down of the health care system, it has proven difficult to bring the disease under control in most of the CIS countries.

TB cases detected in the prison system population cause enormous suffering and death in the Southern Caucasus where the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) supports the national authorities by providing treatment for prisoners. In 1995, when the ICRC launched a TB Control Programme in prisons of Azerbaijan, TB – sometimes called the “white plague” - was at least 60 times more frequent in prisons than within civil society. Later on, in 1998, the ICRC initiated to support the Ministry of Justice of Georgia to implement the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short Course) strategy recommended by the World Health Organization, to treat infectious cases of TB in penitentiary system of Georgia. The ICRC extended its support to Armenia in the year 2002.

Prisoners are eventually released back into society. If these prisoners have TB but have not been cured, they bring TB with them. Since TB is a national public health issue, which also affects the population outside prisons, the ICRC is co-ordinating its efforts with other stakeholders in the civilian sector, including the donor' community, to reinforce the synergy of joint efforts to fight TB. Since 1995, the ICRC supported the treatment of more than 8000 prisoners in Southern Caucasus. Major problems include the release of prisoners before they have completed their treatment courses linked to the sometimes poor coordination between the authorities responsible for health inside the prisons and those responsible for the national TB programmes.

Major challenges are still ahead. Outbreaks of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in prisons of the region risk spreading these dangerous strains of TB into the community through families, prison staff and released prisoners. In addition, opportunistic TB infections will increasingly destroy families and communities, as the scourge of AIDS spreads throughout the Former Soviet Union. The response needs to look at the devastating epidemics as an issue within the whole public health system of society. Urgent interventions including treatment of drug resistant patients and reducing HIV progression must be implemented.