Russia's prisons fuel drug-resistant tuberculosis

A rising epidemic of multidrug-resistant (MDR) tuberculosis in Russia is being fuelled in part by infection among inmates in Russia's crowded jail system, and also by what one public health expert called a major bottleneck of second-line antituberculosis drugs. However, approaches to the treatment of tuberculosis in Russia have their critics, with some observers calling imprisonment to enforce treatment an abuse of human rights.

The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 9, Issue 10, Page 594, October 2009