TB is curable say all the doctors. The problem is that patients do not want to be cured.
 
Very contagious patients escape from hospitals and spread disease in transport and at work. Doctors do not have the right to keep infected people in hospital as hospital is not a prison.
 
These are the lungs of a person infected with TB. He spent in hospital one week and today he is a free bird. He has escaped. The doctor says that the patient has a very serious stage of disease. Once he sneezes on someone and we have a new victim.
 
T. Karabyev, a deputy chief of dispensary department of tuberculosis hospital #1 "Yes, that’s true that we don’t have any security, so sick people just go outside without our permission. They behave rude, make a mess and we have to put up with it and then we have to discharge them from the hospital.
 
The doctors say that they are not entitled to keep the patients in hospital by force, even the most contagious patients. It’s against the law. But the TB infected people leave hospital not just to get drunk. Nobody wants to take a sick leave and lose money and even the job. And it’s not great pleasure to stay in awful wards next to ex-cons.
 
And TB is treated by old doctors in Ukraine; young people do not want to be TB doctors. Everybody is talking about TB epidemics; however there is no financing at all. And if the equipment is poor in TB hospitals of the capital, what can one expect in Oblast hospitals?
 
Samuil Lobik, an X-ray doctor: "I don’t remember the manufacture date of our X-ray equipment; it’s ancient, now digital equipment is used everywhere else.
 
No structure knows the true number of TB infected people in Ukraine. Forecasts are made depending on the situation.
 
Anatoliy Zaboltnyy, Director of the SCM Foundation for Development of Ukraine: "We know for sure that sometimes statistics can be set too low and sometimes too high, in the interests of the TB service, for instance".
 
And the Ukrainians suffer from X-ray phobia. They have not visited X-ray room for years. That is why for most of quite successful people TB diagnosis is like a bolt from the blue.

Iryna Skosar, Roman Bodnar, NC
New channel. Reporter news program
September 25, 19:15
Watch video report: http://video.novy.tv/reporter/reporter_2007_09_25-5.wmv (10.1Mb)