“It’s even surprising that they opened a case about anthrax”: dangerous burial grounds

“It’s even surprising that they opened a case about anthrax”: dangerous burial grounds



Surprisingly, cases of anthrax in Russia are still isolated. Until the last emergency in Chuvashia, when three fell ill. The chain of infection almost reached the Moscow region, where one of the possibly infected with suspicious symptoms arrived and ended up in the hospital - fortunately, the ulcer was not confirmed here. Will the threat of the spread of a deadly disease across the country become real, and how can it be prevented?

In many Russian regions - in the Moscow region, in Stavropol, in the Volgograd region, Dagestan, Ingushetia, in Siberia - there are dozens of cattle burial grounds where animal corpses infected with anthrax spores are buried. They often become the focus of the spread of infection. There are such "pet cemeteries" in the annexed Kherson region. Moreover, it is possible that the safety of this particular burial site is under threat.

More than ten years ago, more precisely in 2010, Ukrainian virologists, biologists, human rights activists sounded the alarm that in the territory of the Kherson region in the area of ​​​​the resort Skadovsk, as a result of groundwater flooding and surface water flooding, abandoned cattle burial grounds, where the corpses of animals that died from the Siberian ulcers.

It turned out that back in 1951, there was a loss of cattle in the vicinity. The dead cattle were taken to the outskirts of the village and buried. For protection, a reinforced concrete sarcophagus was placed on top.

The sea was then located quite far away, almost a kilometer away from the burial. Therefore, it was believed that there was no particular danger to people and animals. However, decades later, the distance to the water has decreased. And by 2010, the cattle cemetery was separated from the beaches and sanatoriums, including children's, only, according to conversations, fifty meters. It was said that some sunbathers even leaned their heads against the wall of the burial ground. Tourists took pictures on the concrete of the sarcophagus. And the metal hunters even threatened to tear apart the iron fittings along the bones ...

In addition, in 2008, one of the private firms also received permission to open a swimming pool next to the burial place ... All demands to stop construction were ignored, although the materials on this case were sent to the regional prosecutor's office and the SBU. Then everything somehow worked out. But the topic surfaced in the summer of last year, by the way, the Russian side sounded the alarm, while the Ukrainians, on the contrary, began to say that there was no cattle burial ground in this territory. Although the number of publications on the Internet rolls over.

There are no exact data on the number of such cemeteries in Russia either. Rather, they are, but for official use. Information about the existence of some can be found in the media: for example, it was published that there are at least six burial sites for the disinfected remains of diseased animals near Novosibirsk. Often it is these cemeteries that become the root cause of infection. Since the owners let the livestock out for a walk in the tall and lush grass.

Last year, a woman was infected in one of the villages of the Stavropol Territory. The patient recovered because the focus was immediately detected and eliminated.

In the summer of 2021, a 52-year-old man from the village of Gurbuki was taken to the infectious diseases department of the Makhachkala hospital, who was engaged in slaughtering and butchering cattle meat.

A year earlier, five residents of the village of Kakamakhi in the Karabudakhkent district of Dagestan had contracted anthrax through contact with domestic animals.

We tracked the entire chain of who could become infected - 26 people, including seven children. Further spread was prevented.

By the way, in all these patients, including patients from Chuvashia, a skin form of the disease was detected, which is easier to tolerate than pulmonary or gastrointestinal.

Anthrax spores - even outside the permafrost, in ordinary soil, live up to a hundred years. They "resurrect" usually where the fences of cattle burial grounds have rotted or the owners thoughtlessly arrange home-made pastures. One gram of meat from a cow that died of anthrax can contain thousands of bacteria that cause the disease.

To be honest, the experts are somewhat surprised by the suddenly initiated criminal case against the owner of a bull-calf infected in Chuvashia. “There should be at least 2-3 such cases in Russia every year. Usually everyone is put on the brakes, but here, apparently, a resonant story came out, ”specialists commented on the situation for MK.

From person to person, only the pulmonary form of the disease can be transmitted by airborne droplets. The bad news: it's also the most dangerous.

The good news is that this form has not been found on the territory of Russia itself for more than half a century.

Published in the newspaper "Moskovsky Komsomolets" No. 28996 dated March 24, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Two news about anthrax - good and bad



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