Taiga ticks attack people

On Friday the Far Eastern Medical Catastrophes Centre sent from Khabarovsk (the centre of the Khabarovsk Territory) a special plane with a team of medical workers and the necessary medical apparatuses on board to Sovetskaya Gavan on the Tatar Strait to save the life of a man attacked by a taiga tick, reported Anatoly Arkhipov, deputy chief physician of the centre.

"I regret to say that the situation is typical," said Anatol Arkhipov. "A 44-year-old man brought home from a walk in the taiga a tick that had attached itself to his leg, thrown it off and crushed it, in the hope that everything would eventually be fine. Alas, sever0al days later he began to feel bad and fainted. Local medical workers requested Khabarovsk for help." Three days ago, he went on, emergency aid had to be sent to the Berezovoi settlement on the Baikal Amur railway and the patient, who was diagnosed to have developed encephalitis, had to be taken by a special helicopter flight to the Professor Sergeyev clinical hospital where there is the necessary sophisticated apparatuses and competent physicians.

Six people who had been bitten by an encephalitis tick are currently in the hospital's extensive care ward. All of them are in a very grave state, receiving all the medical assistance they need. During the current summer more than 100 people attacked by ticks have already been saved at the hospital, although three have died. Grave consequences of the disease, as a rule, await those who have ignored anti-encephalitis vaccinations.