From Russia - with fear
Since the fall of the communist regime four years ago, the former Soviet territory has become a land of opportunity - for better or worse - for many of its inhabitants. One delighted opportunist is Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the microorganism responsible for diphtheria. Slipping through rents in Russia's tattered health system and gaps in its population's immunity against the disease, and taking advantage of newly mobile population groups to travel around in, this bug has kindled an epidemic that has to date affected nearly 80 000 people and killed more than 2 000 throughout the former USSR. In its westward sweep across Russia and into the Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic States, the outbreak has begun to leak cases - via infected travellers - into Poland, Finland, Norway, Germany and even the U.S. Some even highly developed countries have population groups that are at risk, according to public health experts, and Western governments have begun to take action to defend vulnerable sections of their populations.
