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Over 20,000 Russian Residents Inoculated Against Hepatitis

Posted on: Saturday, 24 September 2005, 09:00 CDT

Over 20,000 Russian residents inoculated against hepatitis

MOSCOW, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- More than 20,900 residents living in Russia's third-largest city of Nizhny Novgorod have been inoculated against type A hepatitis, an outbreak of which was reported at the beginning of the month, the Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday.

All the city's residents can be inoculated as the Russian Health and Social Development Ministry delivered on Friday 20,000 doses of vaccine against viral hepatitis A to Nizhny Novgorod, the city's Vice-Mayor Sergei Gladyshev was quoted as saying.

Parts of the vaccine will also be supplied to Dzerzhinsk and Balakhna, which have also reported an increase of the type 1 hepatitis rate.

On Thursday, 55 people, including 20 children and teenagers, were hospitalized with suspected hepatitis diagnosis. All in all, the local hospitals have admitted 990 hepatitis patients, and 120 of them have been discharged, the report said.

Vaccine has begun to be distributed to vaccination stations opened in the city's clinics. "At present, there is enough vaccine in order to meet needs of endangered parts of Nizhny Novgorod," the Russian president's deputy representative in the Volga Federal District, Lyubov Glebova, told Itar-Tass.

The drinking water is daily disinfected and sewage waters intensively chlorinated. "The latest samples at the Sormovo water- pumping stations have shown that the water is clean and does not pose danger," she said.

Last summer, the south-western part of the Tver region was also hit by hepatitis. A total of 683 people, including 187 children, were infected in the region. The epidemic was quickly controlled within the area owing to emergency anti-epidemic measures, according to the Russian media.

Source: Xinhua News Agency - CEIS

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