MOSCOW, August 3 – RIA Novosti, Larisa Zhukova. Flash anthrax amazed Yamalo-Nenets District for the first time in 75 years. Recently it became known about the death of a 12-year-old child. Ulcers were found in 20 people. Another 70 remain hospitalized with suspected infection, more than half of them children. RIA Novosti found out why the bacillus is dangerous, how to protect yourself from the disease, and what the authorities and local residents think about it.

Causes of the outbreak

Quarantine in the Yamal district of the district was introduced on July 25. Then it became known about the mass death of animals: more than 2 thousand deer died from anthrax. According to local residents, the media and authorities did not report what happened for about a week: “We learned all the information primarily from social networks from relatives of doctors and rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” said Salekhard resident Galina (name changed).

“The scale of the epidemic was also influenced by the fact that at first they thought it was to blame hot weather and the deer die from heatstroke. We lost a week or even a little more on this."

Told by local resident Ivan (name changed).

Anthrax was found in 20 Nenets. The figures were given by the chief freelance specialist of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation for infectious diseases Irina Shestakova.

According to her, all the infected are nomadic reindeer herders who were at the epicenter of the infection outbreak in the tundra. Most of them have the cutaneous form of the disease.

This is not complete data on the number of cases, district governor Dmitry Kobylkin told RIA Novosti. According to him, it takes up to thirty days to establish an accurate diagnosis: today is only the eighth day.

In 2007, mandatory vaccination against infection was canceled: scientists did not find anthrax spores in the soil, the governor said. The situation turned out to be extraordinary: last time there was an epidemic in 1941. We had to ask for help from the military: “It was difficult to quickly dispose of the fallen deer on our own before they decomposed. And they were scattered over a long distance,” said Dmitry Kobylkin.

Why is the disease dangerous?

"Anthrax is quite contagious and causes a large number of deaths,” said Vladislav Zhemchugov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, a specialist in especially dangerous infections. - The spores of the pathogen are stored in the soil for centuries. The infection, which entered the ground along with a dead animal back in the time of Alexander the Great, remains active." According to the doctor, outbreaks of the disease occur after the activation of foci (washing of spores to the surface) during floods, excavations or melting ice, as in Yamal.

The disease occurs in different forms: skin, intestinal and pulmonary. The pulmonary form, for example, was present in the United States when envelopes with spores were sent out - this is the most severe form of infection. Almost one hundred percent fatal without urgent medical intervention: people lose consciousness and die within a few hours of infection.

“It is easier to cure the skin form, because lymph nodes stand in the way of bacteria: they delay the development of the disease. A sign of infection are carbuncles - ulcers with a black top. The intestinal form of anthrax causes high temperature, intestinal pain and diarrhea. The period from infection to death can be several hours or days,” said Vladislav Zhemchugov.

Most often, infection occurs when eating or cutting the meat of a sick animal. This is a real concern for the Nenets, since the main source of meat for many is venison: “We usually buy one or two carcasses for the season,” said local resident Ivan (not his real name). “Now we will not only not be able to buy meat, but we will also be afraid to buy fish.”

Against vaccinations

Anyone can get vaccinated against anthrax: ninety thousand doses of the vaccine have been delivered to the region. However, nomadic reindeer herders refuse to consider anthrax a real threat.

According to local media, the child who died from anthrax not only ate contaminated deer meat, but also drank its blood. “This is the traditional food of the northern peoples who live in the tundra and are deprived of food diversity. Fresh blood gives them energy,” said Andrei Podluzhnov, a veterinarian and breeder of red deer.

According to him, nomads meet civilization twice a year, when they come to sell deer for meat, and do not trust “people with big land". That is why many reindeer herders hide their livestock from counting, vaccination and slaughter. Despite the fact that, according to the press service of the governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Okrug, they managed to vaccinate 35 thousand reindeer, nomads continue to hide the animals as much as possible and divert them from meeting with rescuers and military:

“For the peoples of the north, the deer is practically a totem animal. The entire life of a reindeer herder is centered around it. For a nomad, losing a deer means losing everything. This is their bread, home, transport. Reindeer herders do not know how to do anything else. The livestock can be reduced greatly: by about three quarters "And it is extremely difficult to restore the population. For the local population it will be a humanitarian catastrophe,"

Andrey Podluzhnov emphasized.

There is no threat to other regions

The causative agent of anthrax can penetrate through water and dust raised from the surface of the soil from the region that is the source of infection. Despite this, experts note that the likelihood of such an infection is extremely low. In the quarantine zone, doctors recommend drinking bottled water or from underground sources. Yamal authorities also warned local residents that picking berries and mushrooms in the forest is now extremely dangerous.

As for other regions of Russia, the most likely carrier of the infection could be birds. But those birds that are now on nesting grounds in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, will fly to wintering grounds in Southeast Asia, India and Australia, told RIA Novosti Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosova Irina Boehme. According to her, the only precedent when birds hypothetically became carriers of the virus was during the bird flu epidemic, but this fact could not be proven one hundred percent.

For the first time in 75 years. More than a thousand reindeer died. A vast area of ​​tundra is under quarantine. Families of reindeer herders and their herds are being evacuated from there. Women and children have already been taken to hospitals and are being examined. Doctors will monitor their condition.

The Yamal tundra is now a quarantine zone. Local residents were not happy about the news of the urgent evacuation. A fatal disease forced them to hastily pack their things and dismantle the plagues. Tundra has become More than 1,200 deer have already been killed. This is the first time this has happened here in 75 years.

To assess the scale of the disaster, experts are examining the epicenter of the outbreak from the air. Massive deaths of livestock were recorded in several camps at once. The cause of it all was anthrax. This has already been confirmed by experts.

“In our country, this disease has been encountered for a long time. And now we have registered more than thirty-five thousand anthrax burial sites according to the cadastre. That is, these are the places where anthrax spores are found in the soil,” notes Yulia Demina, deputy head of the epidemiological department supervision of Rospotrebnadzor.

Perhaps the deer, in search of food, stumbled upon the remains of a long-dead animal. The infection spread quite quickly. “We are making a large cattle burial ground, when the equipment comes up, sprinkle it with bleach, fence it off and mark a point in the navigator, and here it will be generally impossible to graze animals for 25 years according to the instructions,” says Vyacheslav Khritin, head of the Salekhard Veterinary Center.

In the near future, specialists will begin to destroy the corpses of infected deer. Doing this in the tundra is quite problematic. “A large amount of fuel is required - about 100 tons. It’s not easy to deliver, but we have found options. We will deliver in barrels by land and air,” complains Dmitry Kobylkin, governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

To save healthy animals, additional vaccination is carried out. . Doctors are on duty in the quarantine zone around the clock. No infection among people has yet been identified. Today, women and children were sent from the camps on a special plane - they were taken to the Yar-Sala hospital. Here they undergo an examination; Moscow experts will make a conclusion based on the analysis. “The baby feels fine, when we arrived by helicopter her temperature rose. Now she seems to feel normal, the temperature has dropped,” says Irina Salinder, a doctor, about her little patient.

The governor of Yamal also went to visit patients from the risk zone today. All necessary support will be provided to the victims the best specialists. A batch of anthrax vaccine is already being prepared for shipment to Yamal - more than thousands of doses of the drug. Despite the fact that about 60 people were at risk, residents of neighboring camps will also be vaccinated.

“This pathogen, it can be in the form of a spore, it can lie in the ground for centuries, nothing will happen to it, it can wait for its moment, this form of spore. Therefore, they appear from cattle burial grounds since the time of Ivan the Terrible, these maps are already lost, and the cattle burial grounds remain. Therefore, well, from time to time people get infected like this,” explains Vladimir Nikiforov, chief infectious disease specialist at the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of the Russian Federation.

Moreover, infection is possible only from sick animals. Anthrax is not transmitted from person to person. And the disease, according to experts, is quite typical for Russia, outbreaks occur every year. For animals it all ends in death, for humans it ends in therapy. Gone Soviet years when the infection was more difficult to defeat. Most often it appears as painless ulcers on the skin and is treated with antibiotics. It is important not to damage the ulcer itself. Otherwise, a generalized form may occur, which is much more difficult to treat. IN severe cases everything ends in death.

There is no threat of the anthrax epidemic spreading beyond the quarantine zone. All animals and people are vaccinated. All personnel of the airmobile group of the Ural Rescue Center, as well as contract military personnel who work in the affected area, were also vaccinated. Alexander Ulyev, one of the members of the group of microbiologists who arrived in Yamal, the head of the surveillance and laboratory control network of the Antistikhia Center of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, told an RG correspondent about this by phone.

When asked how dangerous a sharp outbreak is such dangerous disease, Ulyev replied that now we can say with confidence that the infection will not spread further. Several factors suggest this. Firstly, there has been no loss of livestock for several days. Secondly, it was possible to quickly vaccinate almost the entire herd, which is more than 30 thousand deer in the Yamal region. Reindeer herders and their families were also vaccinated. Everyone who is in the area and intends to leave is under surveillance. Incubation period illness has 7 days. And during this period people undergo observation. So you can be sure that no one will bring the disease on themselves or on their clothes to other regions. According to the microbiologist of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, serious control has been established both on the part of rescuers and on the part of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Why did the anthrax outbreak occur in Yamal?

Alexander Uliev: Epidemiologists are still figuring this out. It is now clear that the disease spread to people from livestock. For some reason, it is deer that are most susceptible to rapid infection with ulcers. And, let's say, large cattle, our Russian cows, are more resistant to the disease. It is possible that the spores of the anthrax thawed after being in suspended animation since 1941, when an even more acute outbreak of anthrax was observed in Yamal.

But why specifically in Yamal, since the current heat has affected not only these places?

Alexander Uliev: In other places there are cattle burial grounds where access is closed. And in Yamal in 1941, no one blew up the permafrost; all dead cattle were not taken to burial grounds and burned. Then the corpses of the deer remained lying in the tundra. The spores of the ulcer were frozen, and now they have come to life. I personally see this version of what happened.

Alexander Ulyev did not rule out that the disease was transmitted in 1941 through the harness. In those days, a lot of belts and girths for horses were made from animal skins. Perhaps some of leather goods were made from the skins of sick animals. But then the country had no time for that, and there was no time to figure it out. Now all interested departments are not only sounding the alarm, but are also actively involved in the fight against the spread of the infection.

Today, the press service of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that 30 rescuers who arrived the day before from Chelyabinsk began setting up tent camps for reindeer herders evacuated from remote areas.

The tents, bedding sets, stoves and food delivered to Salekhard the day before by the Ministry of Emergency Situations aviation are now being transferred to the village of Yar-Sale, from where the Ministry of Emergency Situations Mi-8 and Mi-26 helicopters will deliver them to the tundra in a clean zone, where the rescuers of the Leader Center will “Eight life support camps will be deployed at the Ural Training and Rescue Center of the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” said Colonel Alexey Vagutovich, head of the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia.

In addition, the press service of the regional governor provided a TASS correspondent with the latest figures on the situation on the peninsula. According to local authorities, in the Yamal region, 200 km north of the village of Yar-Sale, more than 2.3 thousand deer died from anthrax in a remote pasture. The total number of livestock in the quarantine zone exceeds 41 thousand heads. For preventive purposes, 256 people, including 132 children, were evacuated from the reindeer herders’ camp. Of these, 90 people, including 53 children, were hospitalized in the infectious diseases departments of medical institutions in Salekhard and Yar-Sale, according to doctors. Suspected anthrax was detected in 28 people, including 15 children. The area of ​​the buffer zone around the anthrax outbreak in Yamal is 11 thousand square meters. km.

Veterinarians intend to vaccinate the entire Yamal livestock against anthrax - more than 700 thousand heads. First of all, vaccination will cover the herd roaming the Yamal region, where an outbreak of anthrax has been recorded. Next in line are Tazovsky and Priuralsky districts. There is not a single case of illness, but when we're talking about about biological safety, it’s better to play it safe,” the governor’s press service noted.

Illustration copyright RIA Novosti Image caption 2.3 thousand deer died from anthrax in the region

After the first outbreak of anthrax in the last 75 years, the authorities of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug will have to do a lot of work to identify old cattle burial grounds and limit access to them, says Deputy Director for scientific work Central Research Institute of Epidemiology of Rospotrebnadzor Viktor Maleev.

Anthrax caused the death of a child on Monday. The number of confirmed cases of the disease in people has already reached 20, Irina Shestakova, the chief freelance infectious disease specialist at the Ministry of Health, said on Tuesday.

According to Shestakova, eight of the 20 sick people are children. A total of 90 people who were in the outbreak of infection in the Yamal region were hospitalized, but for most of them the diagnosis was not confirmed.

The reason for hospitalization was the slightest ailment, including a runny nose and skin irritation.

“Several patients who caused us concern a few days ago, today, according to the results of the morning round, showed a stable condition with a very clear positive trend,” Shestakova said.

Cases of the disease, as a rule, belong to families of reindeer herders. 2.3 thousand deer died from anthrax in the region.

According to local authorities, deer in search of food stumbled upon the remains of an animal that died from anthrax and then infected each other.

The authorities of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug have already begun to vaccinate both animals and families of reindeer herders. Residents from the “clean zone” living near the outbreak of the disease will be the first to receive the vaccine.

In the meantime, all people who were directly in the outbreak receive antibacterial drugs as part of prevention, and three days after that they will be vaccinated.

BBC Russian Service talked to VictorohmMaleevth about how dangerous the outbreak of the disease is in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and what local authorities now need to do to avoid such incidents in the future.

Animal burial ground with guards

BBC: What are the reasons for the anthrax outbreak in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and can we say that this is some kind of extraordinary case?

Victor Maleev: Of course, it’s impossible to say that this is something outstanding, because there were more outbreaks. The main reason is that the cattle burial grounds, which were previously under permafrost, apparently thawed, and the bacteria became more active. It is usually in spore form, but here it was in vegetative form.

One of the reasons is that we may not know the location of all cattle burial grounds, and this bacterium can be stored for hundreds of years.

When there was an outbreak of the disease many years ago, the temperature was also very high. This is an animal disease, and now more than two thousand reindeer have died there.

Since there are very close people living there, they live next to the camps, that is, the sick are among them. So far, one child has died and had the intestinal form: he apparently consumed contaminated meat.

Now they are doing very important issue- disposal of dead animals and the creation of a new burial ground for many years to come, with security so that people no longer have the opportunity to catch this bacterium.

BBC: Does this mean that Nenets reindeer herding communities are in a very vulnerable position to this and other diseases that are transmitted through animals?

V.M.: Probably, to some extent, yes. They have such a life, they communicate most closely with animals, and this has been the case for many centuries. It's probably better when people are separate, animals are separate, but this is a type of life that exists in many parts of the world. Although, of course, the children could probably be kept away.

BBC: How big is the public danger from this outbreak?Let's say, should people in Yamal who are not reindeer herders and do not live close to them be afraid of something?

V.M.: No, this infection is not transmitted this way. It is cutaneous, that is, it is transmitted through contact, only by people who interact with deer.

In this case, there is a cutaneous form, only one boy had an intestinal form, and the cutaneous form is only dangerous on contact. Since all patients with the cutaneous form are already isolated, the possibility that someone will rub closely against this skin is excluded, so the contact route of transmission is not dangerous for others.

True, we need to watch others, because we don’t know how many people interacted with deer.

Climate influence

BBC: What is the forecastAndWhen is anthrax diagnosed in humans? What does this depend on?

V.M.: The prognosis depends on the time of initiation of treatment and the form of the disease. When there were cases of bioterrorism in America, the disease spread through airborne droplets. The pulmonary form, as in cases of bioterrorism, is worse, and when it is cutaneous, it is usually believed that the mortality rate is up to 10%.

BBC: The last time anthrax was recorded in Yamal was in 1941, 75 years ago. Why does the disease return?

V.M.: Climate, climate. Climate change have a strong influence. Old cattle burial grounds: apparently, it was just for now permafrost, we didn’t fully know what was there.

These places are poorly explored, and cattle burial grounds are dangerous for 100 years after burial, and now this situation has arisen with a sharp warming of the climate.

In other regions of Russia, access to cattle burial grounds is limited, they are known, they are guarded, and no activity is carried out there. But here, after all, there are nomadic places, huge spaces.

BBC: It was reported that the manufacturer of the anthrax vaccine had shipped a thousand doses to Yamal. Who is the vaccine primarily intended for?

V.M.: Now we mainly vaccinate veterinarians and livestock breeders. Now we need to be especially careful, because we don’t know: maybe some deer have already suffered mild forms of the disease, and people communicate with them.

Laboratory workers who work with bacteria also need to be vaccinated. There is a vaccine, thank God. It is not present in many other diseases.

Now the main thing is to return to the issue of these cattle burial grounds in order to limit them so that animals no longer climb there.

MOSCOW, August 3 – RIA Novosti, Larisa Zhukova. An anthrax outbreak hit the Yamalo-Nenets District for the first time in 75 years. Recently it became known about the death of a 12-year-old child. Ulcers were found in 20 people. Another 70 remain hospitalized with suspected infection, more than half of them children. RIA Novosti found out why the bacillus is dangerous, how to protect yourself from the disease, and what the authorities and local residents think about it.

Causes of the outbreak

Quarantine in the Yamal district of the district was introduced on July 25. Then it became known about the mass death of animals: more than 2 thousand deer died from anthrax. According to local residents, the media and authorities did not report what happened for about a week: “We learned all the information primarily from social networks from relatives of doctors and emergency rescue workers,” said Salekhard resident Galina (name changed).

“The scale of the epidemic was also influenced by the fact that at first they thought that the hot weather was to blame and the deer were dying from heatstroke. We lost a week or even a little more due to this,”

Told by local resident Ivan (name changed).

Anthrax was found in 20 Nenets. The figures were given by the chief freelance specialist of the Russian Ministry of Health for infectious diseases, Irina Shestakova.

According to her, all the infected are nomadic reindeer herders who were at the epicenter of the infection outbreak in the tundra. Most of them have the cutaneous form of the disease.

This is not complete data on the number of cases, district governor Dmitry Kobylkin told RIA Novosti. According to him, it takes up to thirty days to establish an accurate diagnosis: today is only the eighth day.

In 2007, mandatory vaccination against infection was canceled: scientists did not find anthrax spores in the soil, the governor said. The situation turned out to be extraordinary: the last time there was an epidemic was in 1941. We had to ask for help from the military: “It was difficult to quickly dispose of the fallen deer on our own before they decomposed. And they were scattered over a long distance,” said Dmitry Kobylkin.

Why is the disease dangerous?

“Anthrax is quite contagious and causes a large number of deaths,” said Vladislav Zhemchugov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, a specialist in especially dangerous infections. “The spores of the pathogen are stored in the soil for centuries. An infection that fell into the ground along with a dead animal back in the time of Alexander the Great , remains active." According to the doctor, outbreaks of the disease occur after the activation of foci (washing of spores to the surface) during floods, excavations or melting ice, as in Yamal.

The disease occurs in different forms: skin, intestinal and pulmonary. The pulmonary form, for example, was present in the United States when envelopes with spores were sent out - this is the most severe form of infection. Almost one hundred percent fatal without urgent medical intervention: people lose consciousness and die within a few hours of infection.

“It is easier to cure the skin form, because lymph nodes stand in the way of the bacteria: they delay the development of the disease. A sign of infection are carbuncles - ulcers with a black top. The intestinal form of anthrax causes high fever, pain in the intestines and diarrhea. The period from infection to death can amount to several hours or days,” said Vladislav Zhemchugov.

Most often, infection occurs when eating or cutting the meat of a sick animal. This is a real concern for the Nenets, since the main source of meat for many is venison: “We usually buy one or two carcasses for the season,” said local resident Ivan (not his real name). “Now we will not only not be able to buy meat, but we will also be afraid to buy fish.”

Against vaccinations

Anyone can get vaccinated against anthrax: ninety thousand doses of the vaccine have been delivered to the region. However, nomadic reindeer herders refuse to consider anthrax a real threat.

According to local media, the child who died from anthrax not only ate contaminated deer meat, but also drank its blood. “This is the traditional food of the northern peoples who live in the tundra and are deprived of food diversity. Fresh blood gives them energy,” said Andrei Podluzhnov, a veterinarian and breeder of red deer.

According to him, nomads meet civilization twice a year, when they come to sell deer for meat, and do not trust “people from the mainland.” This is why many reindeer herders hide their livestock from being counted, vaccinated and slaughtered. Despite the fact that, according to the press service of the governor of the Yamalo-Nenets District, they managed to vaccinate 35 thousand deer, nomads continue to hide the animals as much as possible and divert them from meeting with rescuers and the military:

“For the peoples of the north, the deer is practically a totem animal. The entire life of a reindeer herder is centered around it. For a nomad, losing a deer means losing everything. This is their bread, home, transport. Reindeer herders do not know how to do anything else. The livestock can be reduced greatly: by about three quarters "And it is extremely difficult to restore the population. For the local population it will be a humanitarian catastrophe,"

Andrey Podluzhnov emphasized.

There is no threat to other regions

The causative agent of anthrax can penetrate through water and dust raised from the surface of the soil from the region that is the source of infection. Despite this, experts note that the likelihood of such an infection is extremely low. In the quarantine zone, doctors recommend drinking bottled water or from underground sources. Yamal authorities also warned local residents that picking berries and mushrooms in the forest is now extremely dangerous.

As for other regions of Russia, the most likely carrier of the infection could be birds. But those birds that are now on nesting grounds in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug will fly to wintering grounds in Southeast Asia, India and Australia, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Moscow State University named after M.V. told RIA Novosti. Lomonosova Irina Boehme. According to her, the only precedent when birds hypothetically became carriers of the virus was during the bird flu epidemic, but this fact could not be proven one hundred percent.