From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 6/17/2005 4:50 AM
June, 16, 2005

"The Tender Killer"

The real scales of epidemic of hepatitis A, promptly extending across whole Central Russia , are already coded by the Kremlin authorities (as usually - "in order to prevent panic"). The fact of coding of these data also could remain a "secret", if some Russian mass-media have not told that the "officials", to whom their correspondents appealed for information, refuse to speak to journalists, referring to an interdiction of "the higher heads". We have decided to help the Russian mass-media a little and to tell them about the real scales of epidemic of hepatitis in Russia , because it is possible to learn about these scales easily enough without any "officials". For this purpose it is enough to appeal to former publications in the Russian mass-media, about the problem of hepatitis in the Russian Federation .

So, on the 19-20 th of December, 2002, in Tyumen , under the aegis of the Russian association of gastroenterologists and the Tyumen branch of the South-Ural centre of science of the Russian academy of medical sciences the All-Russia medical conference named "Gastroenterology and hepatology today" was carried out. Well-known gastroenterologists and hepatalogists of Russia took part in it. The delegates of the conference paid special attention to the situation with versions of hepatitis, developed in Russia . In the release of 20.12.02. the news agency "Regnum" referring to the reports of the conference noted, that for that period the virus of hepatitis had infected about 30 % of Russians, that is about 45 million people. The publishing house explains: "Such a huge quantity can be explained with ease of infection with hepatitis: it is 1000 times infectious than the AIDS. The only hope to take dangerous disease under the control is its preventive maintenance".

However today, 2,5 years later according to numerous proofs of doctors it is found out, that almost no work on prevention of the distribution of the virus of hepatitis in the Russian Federation have been carried out. And hepatitis, according to Russian experts, is 1000 times more infectious than the AIDS, which in Russia also extends very quickly: in the Russian Federation according to the official reports of physicians every year the number of the sick with the AIDS increases for 20 %, outstripping even Africa – and these are only the cases, registered by doctors. Therefore for the two years from the moment of the Tyumen conference the number of Russians, infected with hepatitis for certain has increased for millions. At the same conference it was noted, that hepatitis leads to a cirrhosis or a cancer of the liver and consequently experts name hepatitis to be "a tender killer", "world catastrophe", "medieval epidemic" (by analogy to epidemics of plague, which in Middle Ages devastated whole countries).

But it is not the most tragic thing in the situation with hepatitis in Russia . On the background of the discussions, how many people - 500 or 5 thousand - are infected with hepatitis in the Tver region and other regions of the Central Russia, the mass-media for some reason do not write about the Russian physicians constantly write with anxiety: that the problem of hepatitis is inseparable from the problem of alcoholism. The main activator of hepatitis is not excrements in the rivers, not dirt in kitchens, but alcohol, by which quantity of consumption of which Russia outstrips all other countries of the world. Alcoholics and simply much drinking people are the "group of risk", predisposed to hepatitis. At the same time, when a person, infected with hepatitis, continues to take alcohol, in most cases, it leads to quick death. This is what doctors write about it, "There is a direct connection between alcoholic dependence and damage of the liver: abusing of alcohol leads to development of alcoholic disease of the liver (ADL), which is shown by three basic forms - steatoz, hepatitis and cirrhosis. Alcohol is considered to be a straight gepatotoxic agent".

And now we shall briefly consider, how many alcohol consumers are in Russia , as the situation with alcoholism is a mirror reflection of the situation with hepatitis. According to the official data of the Ministry of Health, today each citizen of Russia for a year consumes, on the average, 14 liters of alcohol. And this statistics includes also babies, old men, and mainly teetotal Russian Moslems (according to different estimations - from 20 up to 30 million people), so the real figure of consumption of alcohol by adults is considerably more. How much more? It is possible to judge about it by the situation with consumption of alcohol in such a typically Russian region as Yaroslavl . The director of the regional department Sergey Baryshev informed on the 5 th of April at the deputy hearings in the Yaroslavl regional Duma, that an average Yaroslavl inhabitant drinks 89 liters of beer and 20 liters of vodka a year. We shall not forget that these data include all inhabitants of the region, including babies and pensioners. Meanwhile, the World organization of public health services (WOHS) considers that already 8 liters of alcohol for 1 person a year are the limit, which threatens the genofund of any nation. Each liter over this norm takes 65 thousand lives in addition.

Now, according to the official data, published in press by the head of the branch of the Epidemical Scientific Research Institute of Narcology of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation professor Evgeniya Koshkina, in Russia there are more than 8 million alcoholics-men, about 2 million chronically drinking women and 0,5 million teenagers younger than 14 years old, already suffering alcoholic dependence. In other words, there are ten and a half millions of officially registered alcoholics in Russia - men, women and children younger than 14 years old. However, the matter with this official statistics is that in the Russian Narcological establishments only those alcoholics are registered, who voluntary appeal to doctors with a written request for treatment from alcoholic dependence. Those, who do not appeal with such a request, are not registered in narcological clinics and not taken into account in official reports.

It is possible to judge by the regional statistics of another, typically Russian region - Archangelsk how much more the quantity of not-mentioned Russian alcoholics is in comparison with the mentioned. So, on the 15 th of March, at the session of the interdepartmental commission at the administration of the region on counteraction to abusing narcotics and their illegal circulation (experts concern alcohol to strong drugs and it is compared by its destructive influence on an organism to heroin and cocaine), the director of the department of public health services of the regional administration Sergey Emmanuilov stated about the situation with drugs in the region. According to him, 30 thousand alcoholics (from whom 855 are teenagers and children) are registered. But actually, according to S. Emmanuilov, "the real figures of the quantity of these people are approximately at 8-10 than times more". There is no doubt, that the real situation with alcoholism (and, accordingly, with hepatitis) and in all other Russian regions of the Russian Federation is the same. As a whole, across Russia the situation looks less catastrophic only because also tens millions of Russian Moslems are included in the general statistics.

The doctors are especially concerned with the circumstance, that the percent of alcoholics in Russia is highest among children and the youth, who have the function of biological reproduction of the population of the country. According to the data published in press, the middle age of the beginning of consumption of alcohol in Russia is 12-13 years. By 24 years it is used already by 70 % of the youth, and also by girls together with young men. As well as in the previous cases, if to appeal to the regional statistics, these data turn out to be considerably more. So, in the Nizhniy Novgorod region alcohol is used on a regular basis by 80 % of the youth, and not beginning with 23 years old men, but 15-17 years boys. On the 19 th of April the main children's expert in narcology of the Nizhniy Novgorod region Alexander Kuznetsov said about it during a round table about the problems of preventive maintenance of a children's and teenage alcoholism in Nizhniy Novgorod.

Doctors-experts in narcology emphasize: "In an early age it is much easier to become an alcoholic, than in an adult one. And it happens so. In Russia the parameter of abusing of alcohol by teenagers in 2003 is three times more than by people of any other age, and it tends to increase. The figures of growth of quantity of teenagers-alcoholics are frightening: for the last four years more than 65 % of them have become alcoholics. In Russia the unprecedented for the rest of the world cases are known, when children of six years are chronic alcoholics, and there is also one case, when a 4 years old kid, whom parents accustomed to drinking beer, became a chronic alcoholic. We shall remind once again, that, speaking about the problem of alcoholism in Russia , we speak actually about the problem of the "tender killer" – hepatitis, the epidemic of which is discussed all these days in the Russian mass-media.

The Patriarch of Russia Alex II, who on the 18 th of May, blessed the church for struggle against alcoholism and narcotism, also became concerned with the Health of the Russian population.

"Churches, doctors, psychologists should unite for struggle against this terrible illness - alcoholism and narcotism ", - the vice-president of the Department of External Church Communications of the RPC bishop Egorevskiy Mark (Golovkov) declared that day on behalf of the Patriarch at the press conference in Moscow Danilov monastery. Doctors and psychologists of Russia seem to do everything in this direction. And how does the RPC struggles against “these terrible diseases - alcoholism and narcotism”? Known western political scientist David Satter writes about it in his "Letter from Moscow" :

"The history of the orthodox church after the wreck of communism can be named the history of non-realized opportunities. After the unfortunate communistic revolution of 1991 Gleb Yakunin, the priest-dissident and a deputy of the parliament, for short time got access to the department of archives of the KGB, in which the highest hierarchs of the Moscow patriarchy were registered as agents of the KGB. The most important agent of the KGB was patriarch Aleksey II. Yakunin appealed to Aleksey with a letter, in which he called him and other church leaders to deny the charges in cooperation or to apologize, having specified that "the people will forgive anything". But only Lithuanian archbishop Hrizostrom had courage to admit, that he had been an agent of the KGB and informed his nickname "Restorer". All other church leaders, who were involved preferred to keep silent.

After the transition to capitalism the church preferred to take advantage immediately of the fruits of official privileges, including the right for duty-free import of alcohol, tobacco products and trade with diamonds. There is nothing surprising that it gave a push to universal corruption. In spite of the fact that the church complained of absence of means for charities and religious education, its commercial activity brought huge incomes, which then disappeared somewhere. For example, in 1995, the Nikolo-Ugreshskiy monastery, which directly submitted to the Patriarchy, earned 350 million dollars on sale of alcoholic drinks, and the department of the patriarchy on communications with churches received 75 million dollars from sale of tobacco. But according to the data of the Patriarchy, its annual budget for 1995-1996 had made only 2 million dollars.

In such conditions the role of religion as a source of moral revival inevitably was extremely limited. Church leaders pursued their commercial interests, with what, in their turn, gave an example to simple priests, who developed their own business, which received blessing, created banks, built houses, bought cars and for a certain payment drove out "evil spirit". At the same time the church did not dare to play though in the slightest degree its political role, keeping silence in connection with such obvious problems of morals, as universal corruption and murder of peace inhabitants in the Chechen Republic" ( the end of the citation ).

It is the question of Yeltsin's decree of 1996, which gave the RPC the right of duty-free trade with tobacco and vodka under the guise of "humanitarian help", though at that time it was well-known, that the World organization of public health services considered drunkenness and smoking to be a heavy kind of narcotism. The RPC began to buy spirit-vodka production and tobacco products abroad without duties and the custom charges and re-sold them at the local market. This brisk gamble was organized by metropolitan Cyril, who headed the Department of external church relations. Soon Cyril was nicknamed "vodka metropolitan". The business, which was realized with assistance of the administration of the president and the government, allows the RPC not only to golden the domes the churches and to built mansions for clerics, but also has included the highest churchmen, including, certainly Patriarch "Drozdov", in number of the oligarchs close to Putin.

Let the reader judge himself, how much the behavior of the RPC, which calls "to struggle against the terrible harm of alcoholism", briskly trading thus with alcohol and accustoming the parishioners to drinking up to death, corresponds to the Christian precepts and simple human morals. And the chances to win hepatitis in Russia are great, if it had not been not only for authorities, but also for the church, subjecting Russian people of all age categories to continuous alcoholization.

Alhazur Erbiev, Chechenpress

16.06.05.
http://chechenpress.co.uk/english/news/2005/06/16/01.shtml