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May 02, 2003

INTERNATIONAL IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"Flare of Diphtheria Closes School for Quarantine in Nizhny Tagil"

ITAR-TASS (www.itar-tass.com) (04/29/03); Chekhomova, Alena

Free vaccines against diphtheria are now being administered to children in the Russian city of Nizhny Tagil, after an outbreak of the disease hospitalized 20 children, one teacher, and closed the school they attended.  All of the affected children had been vaccinated, leading Yelena Romashina, chief doctor of the city's sanitary and epidemic monitoring service, to suggest that "it might be a possibility [that] we are dealing with a new form of the disease resistant to the existing vaccine."  Cases of diphtheria have also been recorded in other area schools and nurseries, as well as among some of the patients' family members.

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