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Plague Spreads Within Turkmenistan, Threatens Neighbors
From The Los Angeles Times, an article by Wendy Orent, the author of Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease.The new nation of Turkmenistan, one of several Central Asian republics that rose from the Soviet Union's ashes, is ruled by a 64-year-old dictator named Saparmurad A. Niyazov, a strutting, miniature Saddam Hussein who calls himself Turkmenbashi (father of the Turkmens). A man of monstrous ego .... The world keeps quiet about Niyazov's eccentricities, aware that his vast wealth comes from control of one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas. .... In March, he dismissed 15,000 licensed healthcare workers "to save money" and replaced them with conscripts. In June, the Turkmenbashi fired Turkmen doctors and other health workers with foreign degrees, saying their training was "incompatible with the Turkmen education system." Most disturbing, he has declared all infectious diseases — cholera, AIDS and other scourges — illegal and has forbidden any mention of them. ... According to both Gundogar, a Turkmen opposition group, and the Turkmenistan Helsinki Initiative, a deadly plague epidemic has broken out in the Turkmenbashi's territory. Yersinia pestis, the germ that causes plague, is widespread among rodents throughout Central Asia, and the strains they carry are among the oldest, most virulent and most dangerous in the world. In the barren deserts of Turkmenistan, the leading plague reservoir is a burrowing rat-sized animal with legs like a miniature kangaroo, Rhombomys opimus, the great gerbil. Recent years in Central Asia have been good for gerbils, producing bumper crops of the grains they eat. More grain means more gerbils, and more gerbils means more plague. .... At least 10 people are known to have died of plague this summer, and some reports place the figure considerably higher. The Turkmen government has responded, predictably, by declaring the word "plague" illegal. It has also instituted border controls "to prevent disease from entering Turkmenistan from neighboring states." Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-08-08 |
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