Infected and Imprisoned: Tuberculosis in a Siberian Jail

The plight of inmates with TB in a Siberian Jail

Merrill Goozner / Scientific American

ABANDON ALL HOPE?: The entrance to a jailhouse in the Russian city of Tomsk. Many inmates suffer from tuberculosis (TB) infections.

PRISONER’S PERSPECTIVE: Some prisoners have multidrug resistant (MDR) TB which often requires an injectable antibiotic to treat. To get their daily shots, prisoners must stick their arms

through the bars.

PASSING THE TIME: Many patient inmates spend their days watching television. They jumped to their feet when the prison doctor stuck his head in the door.

HANGING ON: A man isolated from other inmates in the MDR-TB wing at the Tomsk prison hospital system. Treatment for this difficult-to-eradicate form of TB can take up to

two years.

SUITED UP:Doctors take special precautions when treating patients in the MDR wards. MDR-TB is not more contagious that regular, so-called susceptible TB, but

caregivers especially wish to avoid contracting a contagious disease that may take two years to fight off with drugs.

POWER OF PRAYER?: The icon-filled Orthodox Christian chapel in the Tomsk prison hospital. Perhaps convicts with TB come here to pray for recovery from the disease.

READY TO WORK AGAIN:The prison bakery where some tubercular patients that are on the mend come to work.

SANATORIUM:It's afternoon in a prison TB ward. After treatment is completed, inmates will return to the assigned prison units.