Risk factors for developing tuberculosis in remand prisons in St. Petersburg, Russia — a case-control study

Abstract

Three of the risk factors (high number of prisoners per bed, not having own bed clothes, and little time outdoors) are certainly possible to approach by improvement of conditions in remand prisons. The remaining three factors (narcotic drug use, good housing before imprisonment, and low income) provide knowledge about study population, but cannot be intervened by prison's medical staff.

Tuberculosis in a southern Brazilian prison

“…First, prisoners have a higher risk of becoming infected with TB than the general population, as most prisons are overcrowded and a high number of prisoners share a cell with inadequate ventilation, inadequate hygiene and inadequate nutrition; in addition, prisoners have limited access to health services and spend little time outdoors. Second, the life circumstances of most prisoners (low socioeconomic and education level, narcotic drug use, HIV infection and underfeeding) can predispose them to developing active TB once they are infected (WHO 1998, Lobacheva 2007, Dara et al 2009, Todrys et al 2011. In this study, five (6,9%) of the 72 TB-positive prisoners declared themselves to be HIV positive on the questionnaire and the other 67 TB-positive prisoners were unaware of their HIV status or denied their status.…”

“…For these reasons, inmates enter prison with pre-existing illnesses or with a higher risk of becoming ill compared to the general population (Dara et al 2009). When the inmates enter the prison system, they are exposed to several factors that contribute to TB evolution, such as incarceration, overcrowding, a higher prevalence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and malnourishment (Lobacheva et al 2007, Banu et al 2010, Abebe et al 2011, Todrys et al 2011.…”

Tuberculosis in prisons: anatomy of global neglect

“…Such host and environmental risk factors facilitate new M. tuberculosis infections to progress to active disease, or may cause re-activation of latent TB in prisoners, the risk of which is at least an order of magnitude higher in prisons than in the general community [3]. Prisons serve as reservoirs of drugresistant TB [10][11][12] which is increasingly being reported from Eastern European [6,7,10,11,13] and SSA prisons [8,9,12,[14][15][16], where TB in prisons remains a neglected public health and human rights issue [15,[17][18][19]. However, the problem of TB in prisons is not only confined to Eastern European and SSA countries.…”

Vigilância epidemiológica da tuberculose em presídios do Espírito Santo

“…Essa elevada taxa de incidência (1.962,6 por 100.000 habitantes) vai ao encontro de estudos realizados em demais localidades do mundo (3,4) , como as observadas no estado de São Paulo (12) , mas é inferior aos índices do Rio de Janeiro (13) . As condições de encarceramento a que essa população é submetida contribuem para os altos índices apresentados.…”

“…Nos demais países da África, essa taxa atinge índices de 10 a 35 vezes maiores do que na população em geral (3) . Dados de incidência da tuberculose no sistema penitenciário da Rússia diferem de acordo com a região, apresentando índices que variam de 1.163 a 4.173 por 100 mil indivíduos, com uma média de 2.028 por 100 mil (4) .…”