Impact of Tuberculosis in Russian Prisons

Impacts of Russian prisons being a breeding ground for tuberculosis:

Societal:

• Prisoners convicted of minor crimes are dying: Russian laws and codes are so severe that stealing a phone or "hooliganism" warrants prison time, so there are many Russian prisoners that are in for minor crimes. In these prisons, they have a 58x higher chance of catching the disease than the average Russian citizen, and are 38x more likely to die from it. As a result, many people who have committed minor crimes have essentially been given a death sentence; the punishment in these cases tends to not fit the crime.   
• Avoidance when released: Once the prisoners are released, and they have TB, they're still not really free. The prisoners are often confined to their homes to avoid spreading infection. They also seldom receive visitors apart from perhaps a nurse who would bring medicine, because TB spreads very easily. Someone infected with TB could cough in a room and the disease stays in the air, so someone could walk in a few hours later and be infected.
• Prisoners are quarantined: Inside the prisons, prisoners who are sick are all grouped together in one area to avoid spreading illness to the other prisoners. This isolates the prisoners even further, they are surrounded by death and are given their medicine between bars. This can have a detrimental effect on the minds and bodies of the prisoners.
• Government money needs to be allocated to expensive TB medicine in order to treat patients meaning there's less money for the prison to address other issues. Tuberculosis treatment costs approximately $2,000 per patient and up to $250,000 if it's MDR-TB. Some of these funds come from taxes, so the Russian citizens are paying for the TB treatments of prisoners.

Separation between nurse and prisoner

Environmental:

• Russian prisoners are creating a new type of tuberculosis: Russian prisons are a place where Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Due to faulty health care or improperly treated TB, a mild case of tuberculosis can become harder to treat by becoming MDR-TB. The medicine prisoners are given is designed to cure them, and the more they take it the better they're supposed to get, but sometimes this doesn't happen. The first few doses get rid of most of the TB bacteria, but if the medication isn't correct or the prisoners stops taking their medication because they feel better, the only bacteria left are the ones resistant to the drug. Those multiply and create an even deadlier type of TB: Multidrug-Resistant, which is much more expensive and difficult to treat. In some cases, people need to take 20 pills a day for years in order to be rid of the disease. This disease doesn't just affect prisoners, since the disease spreads outside of prison, people everywhere can contract MDR-TB.
• The sick stay sick: Russian prisoners with TB are all quarantined together, this includes the time while they're taking medication. You can catch TB more than once, so it's almost impossible to fully recover in quarantine because once you feel better, someone can just cough and infect you once more. In 2004, prisoners accounted for 12% of Russia's TB cases. 
• Russian prisoners are infecting the population: Prisoners are very likely to catch TB in prison, and once their sentence is up they're released back into Russia where they, and other faculty from the prison can spread the disease. They can also go to other countries and have infected people in that way. Tuberculosis spreads very easily, for instance, one man took a flight from Russia to New York in order to access better medication, but he coughed on his plane flight. As a result of a cough, thirty-four people on the flight were infected with TB.

Lungs with TB (left) vs. healthy lungs (right)