Infectious diseases are increasing due to government health reform, specialists warned last Thursday.

While diseases used to be decreasing in Bulgaria, this has been reversed due to the low quality of life, low hygiene, and lapses in health care following health reform. At the same time, the infectious diseases wards are in the worst condition of all hospital wards, infectious diseases specialists said.

The incidence of infectious diseases has increased in the past few years as a result of the deteriorating household and social conditions of the population, said associate professor Maida Tiholova, head of the Infectious and Parasite Diseases Clinic with the St. Ivan Rilski General Hospital for Active Treatment in Sofia. For example, two cases of polio, a disease which has not surfaced in Bulgaria in 15 years, were reported this year. Tuberculosis and Marseille fever cases have also been increasing.

Tiholova said health reform brought along a number of problems - it led to decentralization of immunizations and broke the connection between health care units. Infectious diseases departments countrywide are lacking modern facilities and equipment. The specialized clinics for infectious diseases are also in a very bad state.

"The health reform also cut down the number of hospital beds for infectious diseases patients, but that did not improve the conditions in the infectious diseases wards," said Dr. Plamen Rachev from the St. Ivan Rilski General Hospital for Active Treatment in Sofia. He gave examples of the hospital in Haskovo (Southern Bulgaria), one of the most infected regions, where children with meningitis were treated outside the infectious diseases ward, as it was in too poor of a condition. The infectious diseases wards in hospitals in Sandanski and Kula (Southwestern Bulgaria) have been completely closed.

"The health reform forgot infectious diseases," Rachev said. "But they are knocking on the door, and if measures are not taken urgently, I don't know what will happen."

According to Tiholova, in order to solve the problem, infectious diseases should become a state priority. Due to their social importance, the state should pay for prophylactics, diagnostics and treatment.

Immunization is of extreme importance in fighting infectious diseases, said immunology professor Plamen Nenkov from the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases. If people did not vaccinate themselves, or there are gaps in the immunization program, it could have disastrous results, he warned. He recalled the case of a massive epidemic of diphtheria in the 1990s throughout the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Decreased childhood immunization was among the major reasons behind the epidemic, which resulted in more than 140,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths.

Nenkov urged parents to have their children immunized with all obligatory vaccines, which were free by law. "This is the essence of the health reform - that people take more responsibility for their own health, and stop waiting for the state to do it," he said. The adult population should also immunize themselves - against diphtheria and tetanus. Bulgaria has an up-to-date immunization system, and high-quality vaccines are being used, which are up to European standards, he said.

As of last Friday, the number of registered cases of meningitis and encephalitis since the beginning of 2001 had reached 354, but these diseases were fading away. Severe diarrhea diseases dominated the previous week, with about 500 cases, but these were also typical for the summer, Tiholova said.