Medical Translation Assignment: translate the text Are anti-tb drugs used properly?

Aim: to apply theoretical knowledge into practice translating medical texts.

Literature and resources:

• Lecture 11-12 – Scientific-technical translation; Medical Translation

• www.multitran.ru

• www.macmillandictionary.com

Are anti-tb drugs used properly?

International experts predict an epidemic of incurable tb

Representatives of British, Belgian and American international charity organizations working in our country beat an alarm. Russia is becoming ‘the world’s incubator for a lethal disease – a new incurable form of TB’. As to these organizations, they think that daily thousands of patients develop a resistance to drugs because of the fact that the doctors use ‘nonstandard schemes of treatment’ and do not use antibiotics properly. The situation is akin to an epidemic. The foreign medics are so frightened that they have sent an open letter to the Russian President.

Actually these international organizations are over-dramatizing the situation as they usually tend to do. Drug-resistant TB is not a new form of the disease at all. Drug-resistant bacteria appeared when medics started to use penicillin.

When a patient is taking the drug for a long period of time (even ordinary aspirin or analgin), his organism gets used to it and simply does not react. It is just the same way with anti-TB drugs. So drug-resistant TB cases are registered not only in Russia, but all over the world. By the way, when the Federal Anti-TB Program was being drafted, medics noted an increase of TB worldwide because of Koch’s bacterium becoming habitually resistant to existing drugs.

The Russian doctors refute charges of using non-standard methods of treatment brought against them. ‘We are not that backward not to know how to use antibiotics’. Russian has its own school of TB treatment, which does not differ too much from that in the West – the case is that we treat different forms of the disease using different methods. By the way, the Western system, whereby the patient is given four antibiotics daily for 6 months running, is getting a firm foothold in today’s Russia as well. Drug-resistant forms of TB result from many patients’ failing to complete the course of treatment, rather than from inappropriate treatment. Some patients take drugs which they receive free of charge, but try to economize on food, although healthy food is essential for their recovery. Moreover, there is a large group of TB sufferers, with homeless people, migrants, drug-addicts, etc. among them, which can be saved by compulsory treatment only.

In today’s Russia the disease is spreading fast because of social problems. Local authorities often forget that TB patients are entitled under the law to separate housing. In their turn, the medics also cannot keep TB incidence under control because it is related to poor living conditions. As we know, the virus of TB is present in 99 percent of the adult population. It remains suppressed due to local immunity, although full-fledged TB can be provoked by anything from stress to malnutrition. In fact, the Russian doctors a century ago believed that a person could stay immune to TB infection living in a room with an incurable TB patient, but die of consumption in case of unshared love.

In prisons the situation is especially critical. The incidence rate among the inmates is 50 times higher than the national average. Two thirds of the registered drug-resistant TB cases are in prison and correctional centers. Labor camps are in critically short supply of anti-TB drugs and are unable to create the necessary conditions for the isolation and treatment of TB patients, but it is impossible to pardon all TB-infected criminals as those restored to liberty would comprise 80 percent of the prison population.

The doctors are well aware of the drug-resistant strains of TB and try to fight back the disease relying on the existing limited funds. International charity organizations are doing their best to help the situation. In particular, they provide for anti-TB measures in correctional centers and prisons. That, however, is hardly a reason for them to accuse their colleagues of incompetence.

SRS 10