RUSSIAN HEALTH CRISIS THREATENS TO SPREAD.

There was further bad news on the health front as British, American and French doctors meeting in London warned that tuberculosis is spreading rapidly in Russia and could become a worldwide epidemic. “It is only a matter of time before drug-resistant tuberculosis of Russian origin becomes a reality in other countries worldwide,” a spokesman for the British charity, Medical Emergency Relief International, told journalists yesterday. In a statement issued with Doctors Without Borders and the New York Health Research Institute, the charity called for the international community to provide funds to combat the crisis. All three organizations are piloting modern TB treatments in Russia but warn that Russia’s economic crisis is complicating their struggle against the disease (Reuters, September 17). Earlier this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the health crisis throughout the former Soviet Union had provoked the first drop in life expectancy in Europe for fifty years, and that TB and diphtheria, once considered almost extinguished in Europe, are again on the rise. Unless more funds are made available, the WHO said, the situation will only get worse (BBC, September 17).

MOSCOW AGAINST NATO MILITARY ACTION IN KOSOVO.