From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 2/26/2006 8:32 PM Mysterious «hysterical» illness afflicts war-zone Chechens Chechen human rights groups on Sunday appealed to a senior European official to help raise awareness of a mysterious epidemic that one doctor attributed to hysteria induced by living in a war zone. Chechen Mothers for Peace leader Madina Mogomadova told Council of Europe human rights commissioner Alvaro Gil-Robles that 117 people from Chelkovskaya, 75 kilometres (46 miles) from the capital Grozny, were affected.
"On February 21 another 17 people fell ill," she said, adding that some were hospitalised in the southern Russian city of Stavropol.
All but 36 of the patients were children and adolescents seemed particularly prone, she said.
Clinic director Igor Boev told AFP 54 Chechens were treated between January 1 and February 20 for "pseudo-asthmatic" attacks.
"These patients have been in a stressed state for 15 to 20 years and their nervous, endocrinological and vascular systems have deteriorated," the psychiatrist said.
He added that they seemed to suffer from "a condition of hysterical origin".
Although Chechen television reported that the condition of some patients hospitalised in Stavropol had worsened, Boev said all patients had left his clinic and were in good health.
The rights groups want patients transferred to Moscow, arguing local hospitals are ill-equipped to analyse the causes of the outbreak.
"There are more and more falling sick, above all adolescents. The doctors are unable to make a diagnosis and have linked this epidemic to psychosis but people don't believe it," said Ali Turpan Djabrailov, member of a regional human rights council.
Chechen Mujahiddeen continue to wage guerrilla war 7 years after Russian forces returned following defeat in the 1994-1996 war.
Russian and international human rights groups say the population still lives in fear of harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and executions by Russian occupation forces while Mujahiddeen also target persons work for the puppet administration.
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